With the story of one American family--the Vickerys of Unity, Maine--Andrea Hawkes tells the history of our country and explores the power of connections, beginning with the first generation of Vickerys from England who founded Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634, then following the fifth generation to the District of Maine just before the American Revolution as they extended the family network from Cape Elizabeth, east to Calais, and north to Unity where succeeding generations thrived for the next two hundred years. In the late 1800s the ninth generation of Vickerys expanded the family network in Maine across the United States to the Montana and Wyoming borderlands, and their stories of pioneer ranching and mining mirror the entrepreneurial spirit of their colonial ancestors.
Drawing in part from the extensive genealogical research of the late James B. Vickery III, Hawkes shapes a continuum of family stories that is richly peopled and finely detailed. From peril and tragedy in Puritan fishing communities, to "following a trail of spotted trees through the woods" to Unity, to the experiences and attitudes of women on remote sheep ranches in Montana, Hawkes keeps a keen historian’s eye on the facts while weaving a fascinating tale.
