Framed by New England’s 1938 Hurricane and advanced through flashbacks, voices of the land, and historical lore, this is the story of MacFarland, a Scots Highlander whose identity is altered by forced exiles. His story emerges in seventeenth-century Connecticut, the era of the Pequot War between Pequots and English colonists in league with Mohegans. Native exiles are portrayed through Pequot sachem Sassacus and the Mohegan Uncas. MacFarland is driven from Scotland to Guildford, southwest of London. Shortly after meeting the Puritan Roger Williams, MacFarland emigrates to Massachusetts Bay Colony, then to the Connecticut shoreline, where he befriends a Quinnipiac family and later Sassacus and Uncas, as well as the commander of Fort Saybrook.Through the Pequot War, MacFarland is forced to decide where his loyalties reside. Ultimately, he finds himself estranged anew and embarks on a “journey-quest” northward along the Connecticut River and disappears, lost in this final exile.As inspired by psychologist Erik Erikson’s notion of a lifelong series of “identity crises,” MacFarland literally assumes new identities as he matures in the Highlands and endures his series of exiles, his life immersed in Puritanism and local histories and cultures. All our lives integrate such elements; we all are identities in exile, in search of our proper place somewhere between “civilization” and “wilderness.” We, like MacFarland, are on a metaphoric journey-quest elucidating our relationships with places, larger environments, the natural world, and realms beyond what we call natural.
| book-author | Dorothy J. Howell |
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