Caleb’s Crossing

By: Geraldine Brooks

Narrated by: Jennifer Ehle

Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's Summary

The new novel from Pulitzer Prize-winner Geraldine Brooks, author of the Richard and Judy bestseller March, Year of Wonders and People of the Book.

Caleb Cheeshateaumauk was the first native American to graduate from Harvard College back in 1665. Caleb’s Crossing gives voice to his little known story. Caleb, a Wampanoag from the island of Martha's Vineyard, seven miles off the coast of Massachusetts, comes of age just as the first generation of Indians come into contact with English settlers, who have fled there, desperate to escape the brutal and doctrinaire Puritanism of the Massachusetts Bay colony.

The story is told through the eyes of Bethia, daughter of the English minister who educates Caleb in the Latin and Greek he needs in order to enter the college. As Caleb makes the crossing into white culture, Bethia, 14 years old at the novel's opening, finds herself pulled in the opposite direction. Trapped by the narrow strictures of her faith and her gender, she seeks connections with Caleb's world that will challenge her beliefs and set her at odds with her community.

©2011 Geraldine Brooks (P)2011 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Awful narration: a crime against a great book

Patronizing schoolmarm-ish narration. Buy the book instead. Geraldine Brooks is a wonderful writer and I have enjoyed reading her work since she wrote at the Wall Street Journal. The narration literally ruins this book.

Very Good

I enjoyed this title very much. Would recommended to everyone. This is worth the one credit I paid.

A jewel of a story.

From the wonderful narration to the beautiful turn of phrase, Caleb’s Crossing is a gem of a novel. Written from the perspective of a girl from a Puritan family it eloquently shows feminism is not solely an issue for women today, nor is the inequality in treatment of those from other faiths and cultures. A top class experience from start to finish.

Caleb's Crossing

I enjoyed this book although it was a little slow-paced. I did find the narration a little stilted at times. It sounded as if the narrator had a slightly Pennsylvania Dutch accent. It may be that she was trying to recreate how English speech would have sounded in that time period. I couldn't guess how the book was going to end but when it came it was perfect and beautiful.

The very best.

I have had to wait to read this as time has been in short supply. It covers and negotiated the most modern, vital and human of aspects in its story. I knew this narrator would tread the territory by choice, perfectly. Thank you to that skill and the author for crafting this universal set of truths for so many of us.