Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
Once again, Geraldine Brooks takes a remarkable shard of history and brings it to vivid life. In 1665, a young man from Martha's Vineyard became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. Upon this slender factual scaffold, Brooks has created a luminous tale of love and faith, magic and adventure.
The narrator of Caleb's Crossing is Bethia Mayfield, growing up in the tiny settlement of Great Harbor amid a small band of pioneers and Puritans. Restless and curious, she yearns after an education that is closed to her by her sex. As often as she can, she slips away to explore the island's glistening beaches and observe its native Wampanoag inhabitants. At twelve, she encounters Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a tentative secret friendship that draws each into the alien world of the other. Bethia's minister father tries to convert the Wampanoag, awakening the wrath of the tribe's shaman, against whose magic he must test his own beliefs. One of his projects becomes the education of Caleb, and a year later, Caleb is in Cambridge, studying Latin and Greek among the colonial elite. There, Bethia finds herself reluctantly indentured as a housekeeper and can closely observe Caleb's crossing of cultures.
Like Brooks's beloved narrator Anna in Year of Wonders, Bethia proves an emotionally irresistible guide to the wilds of Martha's Vineyard and the intimate spaces of the human heart. Evocative and utterly absorbing, Caleb's Crossing further establishes Brooks's place as one of our most acclaimed novelists.
Review: Young Bethia Mayfield has been raised on the tiny settlement of Great Harbor on the island that is now known as Martha's Vineyard. Her whole life is shaped by her yearning for education and schooling, most of which she must glean from snippets she overhears as her minister father instructs her older and much more dimwitted brother. When she can, she slips away to explore the island's beautiful beaches. Which is how she befriends the young son of a chieftain, who she gives the name Caleb. Their paths seem somehow intertwined, as Caleb becomes the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. Despite yearning to also study, Bethia must content herself with observing and overhearing what she can as she has been indentured as a housekeeper nearby.
I loved that Geraldine Brooks based this work of historical fiction off a true individual from history. There was a young Native American from what is now Martha's Vineyard that became the first to graduate from Harvard in 1665. Little is known about his short life and Bethia is a fictional character, but many details of her life, particularly her menial position and lack of formal education, would have been true of a woman during the mid to late 1600s. I loved the island setting and the beautiful description we get of its natural beauty from our narrator Bethia.
This is the third novel I have read by Geraldine Brooks and it features the same thoughtful characters, piercing and devastating scenes of tragedy brought to life by her careful and beautiful writing. She has a distinct way of bringing historical events to life, and helping her readers feel empathy for her characters. For instance, there is a scene where Bethia is describing how will occasionally let slip how much she has been able to pick up and learn just from her brother's lessons with her father as instructor. But that her father ultimately is displeased for a female to be learning: "that father's pleasure was of a fleeting kind - that reaction one might have if a cat were to walk about upon its hind legs. You smile at the oddity but find the gait ungainly and not especially attractive. Soon, the trick is wearisome, and later, worrisome, for a cat on hind legs is not about its duty, catching mice. In time, when the cat seems minded to perform its trick, you curse at it, and kick it" (16).
However, this was my least favorite of her novels that I have read. It is ultimately unclear to me why this book was given the title it was, since Caleb is a peripheral figure at best. This is Bethia's story. While she did enjoy a long friendship with Caleb, he truly is a minor character in the end. There was also something unsatisfying to me about the way this novel came together. Bethia experiences immense loss and is always nearly solely motivated by her desperate longing for education. I did not feel the connection between Bethia and Caleb, or later between Bethia and the man she marries, felt true or deep the way Brooks writes it. So many things about the plot felt fruitless in the end - Caleb and Bethia's struggle to pursue education and prove themselves, in particular. Neither ended up getting to do much with what they had learned. I also found Bethia's brother Makepeace one of the most pleasant and inconstant characters I have encountered in some time. He vacillates between cruel and abusive to generous and understanding at every turn in a way that did not feel realistic or cohesive for one person's character.
Stars: 3.5
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