Savage Kingdom

I've finished listening to Savage Kingdom by Benjamin Woolley. I don't know if you'd like it or not, but if you're a mixed bag, it will suit you to a T. It covers the first few years of the Jamestown colony and is written in a style sometimes academic and sometimes folksy.

The former style comes out in the droning telling of the mundane operations of the Virginia Company in its attempts to raise enough money to send the next supply ship. Yes, I was restless here.

The latter style is used to relate the mundane day-to-day life in the colony. It's amazing to me that a colony that struggled so hard just to keep from starving should have spent so much of its time executing its dissidents. It's not so surprising that so many of its colonists should have run away to live with the Indians, although their new diet was usually only marginally better than before. I've dug gardens in Virginia soil before, and I can tell you that it's not good for much.

Perhaps what kept my interest was that Jamestown is just a few (score) miles away, so it has local interest. "The Chickahominy River...say, shouldn't that have 'confounded' in the phrase?" "Hog Island? That's where the nuke plant is". "Morgart's Beach! He's talking about the rivah house!" Toss in the fact that the GB has traced all but one of her immigrant ancestors and they all came ashore not more than 50 miles from J-town. The book gets a another free point because it mentions Stephen Hopkins, my gggggggggggg-grandfather, who was both an early immigrant to Virginia and a Mayflower passenger, thereby giving him the unique distinction of being a member of the First Families of both Virginia and Massachusetts. I try not to let it go to my head, but I do have 0.012% of his genes, along with the rest of his 20,000 or so descendants.

Breaking with long tradition, I've re-read this post before publishing it, and realize that I haven't been too positive about this book. I guess it meant more to me than it would to most. Come to think of it, even a glowing review wouldn't sell more than half a copy, given my readership. And maybe that's just as well.