Scandal and tragedy runs through many of these tales. Whittock devotes a chapter to the rebels and scoundrels of Plymouth. Myles Standish led brutal outrages against the Native Americans ... The entertaining narrative of Mayflower Lives carries the reader through the times as reality and not children's stories.
... an incisive series of biographical and historical essays on the Mayflower’s passengers ... Myths aside, the striking quality about the Mayflower’s trans-Atlantic journey—and this emerges beautifully in Mr. Whittock’s narrative—is just how archetypally American the whole affair was ... Mr. Whittock is refreshingly reluctant to judge his subjects harshly. Gone are the usual snide remarks about the Puritans’ narrowness and grimness ... It’s perhaps not so surprising that such an assemblage of resolute men and women should contain a number of memorable lives, though it is surprising just how much historians have discovered about people who, with only two or three exceptions, remained unknown in their own day. Mr. Whittock has woven their stories together wonderfully ... Mr. Whittock displays a fine eye for detail, too.
For Whittock, the stories of these complex, interconnected lives, their successes and shortcomings, for better or worse, have imparted fundamental and enduring influence on American culture and identity ... This accessible book, among several that have demythologized Mayflower history, will appeal to readers at all levels.
Difficult as it is to separate fact from legend, Whittock’s recounting of these seminal lives makes great reading for students of early colonial American history.
The author’s female stories prove especially poignant ... Whittock also includes a fantastic biography of so-called Squanto (Tisquantum), who had been kidnapped by Englishmen earlier in his life, spoke English, and was returning to his native land, which was denuded of population due to the devastation of European-spread disease. Stories full of faith and struggle lose none of their mythological quality.
The book’s organizing principle, one life per chapter, is dispensed with toward the end for a chapter on a love story and one on a variety of social rebels, and a somewhat simplistic conclusion lauds the colonists’ devoutness and courage. Readers looking for an introduction to the Pilgrims will be adequately served; others may come away unsatisfied
