I, Roger Williams: A Novel [Paperback]

Mary Lee Settle (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: NY (1980)
• ASIN: B000MU2RS6
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Undiscovered Treasure, February 10, 2002

By 

David (Charleston, SC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I, Roger Williams (Hardcover)

I stumbled across "I, Roger Williams" in the public library, while I was waiting for my wife to go through the check-out line. A brief glance was enough to capture my attention, even though I had heard nothing about this book. After a careful reading (sometimes with a dictionary at my side), I am ready to read it again. "I, Roger Williams" is a sublime work, weaving great insight about human relations with credible historical fiction. With a delicate touch Mary Lee Settle has written one of the finest works of fiction I have ever read. This is a book to read slowly and savor, as it sparks reflection about law and faith and tolerance, and it piques curiosity about historical detail. No other work of fiction has so artfully explored the continuity between old England and New England, or critiqued the weaknesses of our ancestors while celebrating their achievements. Mary Lee Settle breathes life into great men who have unjustly become footnotes for historians. And she paints the most joyous pictures of faithfulness in marriage and wisdom with aging that I have seen. I am deeply indebted to the author for her research, wit, grace, and maturity; and I recommend this work to all who have the patience to read a masterpiece.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Radical Puritan Comes to America, August 3, 2001

By 

Todd Kenyon (Brooklyn, New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I, Roger Williams (Hardcover)

This is a superb novel about an era of American and English history that is today often overlooked or misunderstood. But if you've read the historian Christopher Hill on the radical Puritans during the English Revolution and are interested in the connection between that world and early America - you should read this book. Mary Lee Settle has produced a beautiful novel that justly glorifies Roger Williams - an American whose love of liberty, freedom and his God lead him to live a life that should be far better known and admired than it is today.

I have to agree, however, with the previous reviewer that the cover of the book should be reworked. If I didn't already have a strong interest in the radical Puritans who settled Rhode Island, I doubt that I would have given the book a second glance.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I, Roger Williams: A book to get us through these times, October 16, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: I, Roger Williams (Hardcover)

I, Roger Williams by Mary Lee Settle, is a tour de force. A perfectly structured fictionalized autobiograpy of Roger Williams, the book makes the origins of the United States' most important freedoms, freedom of religion, belief, speech, and the separation of church and state come alive. At the same time it conveys the human side of our forefathers and the forces that shaped their thought and actions. A must read for anyone who would wish to understand and protect democracy.