The Red Tent meets The Scarlett Letter in this haunting historical novel set in a colonial New England whaling village.
âWhen was it that the sense of trouble grew to fear, the fear to certainty? When she sat down to another solitary supper of bread and beer and picked cucumber? When she heard the second sounding of the geese? Or had she known that morning when she stepped outside and felt the wind? Might as well say she knew it when Edward took his first whaling trip to the Canada River, or when they married, or when, as a young girl, she stood on the beach and watched Edward bring about his fatherâs boat in the Point of Rock Channel. Whatever its begetting, when Edwardâs cousin Shubael Hopkins and his wife Betsey came through the door, they brought her no new grief, but an old acquaintance.â
When Lyddie Berryâs husband is lost in a storm at sea, she finds that her status as a widow is vastly changed from that of respectable married woman. Now she is the âdependentâ of her nearest male relativeâher son-in-law. Refusing to bow to societal pressure that demands she cede everything that she and her husband worked for, Lyddie becomes an outcast from family, friends, and neighborsâyet ultimately discovers a deeper sense of self and, unexpectedly, love.
Evocative and stunningly assured, The Widowâs War is an unforgettable work of literary magic, a spellbinding tale from a gifted talent.