Ebook: Mayflower Lives: Pilgrims in a New World and the Early American Experience

A fresh and revealing history of one of the most seminal events in American history as seen through fourteen diverse and dynamic figures.

Leading into the 400th anniversary of the voyage of the Mayflower, Martyn Whittock examines the lives of the "saints" (members of the Separatist puritan congregations) and "strangers" (economic migrants) on the original ship. Collectively, these people would become known to history as "the Pilgrims."

The story of the Pilgrims has taken on a life of its own as one of our founding national myths—their escape from religious persecution, the dangerous transatlantic journey, that brutal first winter. Throughout the narrative, we meet characters already familiar to us through Thanksgiving folklore—Captain Jones, Myles Standish, and Tisquantum (Squanto)—as well as new ones.

There is Mary Chilton, the first woman to set foot on shore, and asylum seeker William Bradford. We meet fur trapper...