From the Inside Flap
In the second novel of Julia Older's Trilogy Thom Taylor is cast onto the lawless Isles of Shoals at the gateway to the New World. Bawdy butcher Babb and his saucy Barbadoes serving wench quickly teach him the ropes of turning cod into cash. They are but a few of the real-life characters that help and hinder the fictive narrator of this sweeping 17th century saga.
Thom comes of age as northern New Englanders are testing the cod-filled waters of their economic independence. Although Shoals mistress Mary Babb, Hampton witch Goody Cole and Strawbery Banke marmalade madams are hardly mother figures, Thom holds onto their apron strings. Just when he's free from indenture, he's pressed on a forced march into wilderness by the Portsmouth Provincial Militia. He escapes a bloody northern Indian massacre only to be deployed by Major Walderne and Massachusetts officers in a "mock battle" betraying 300 native Abenaki to West Indies slavers. Longing for Babb's Bardadoes mistress, and sick of Shoals drink, dice, and deflowering, Thom sets sail with Captain Phips to salvage sunken gold. A mutinous plot cutting the voyage short returns him to a nest of pirates anchored at the Shoals. Summoned to testify at their trial, Thom and Judge Samuel Sewall are caught in the hanging fervor of Boston big-wig Cotton Mather.
Tight-laced Puritans are no match for the spirit and industry of these northerners of this ground-breaking novel. They are the real blood-and-guts founders of THIS DESIRED PLACE.
From the Back Cover
From the Back Cover
Advance Comments for This Desired Place; The Isles of Shoals
"History comes to life on New England's storied Isles of Shoals in Julia Older's This Desired Place, an exciting blend of Colonial fact and fiction, a stirring and salty tale of Indian warfare, pirates and Puritans." --David Watters, Center for New England Culture, Director.
"Older magnificently and viscerally brings to life the experience of early American settlers on the New Hampshire seacoast. Drama builds as the fast moving story of Thom Taylor twists and turns. The author's skill in weaving together known history with human interaction makes one wonder if she might have been living in the 1600s!" --Cally Gurley, Maine Women Writers Collection, Curator.
Praise for Older's First Shoals Novel The Island Queen; Celia Thaxter of the Isles of Shoals.
"Who could resist a combination of beauty, poetry and blood? This is a real tour de force." --Marilis Hornidge, The Courier Gazette.
"Compared to some of the trash that occupies current bookshelves, The Island Queen is a wholesome reflection of the innocense of yesterday and a welcome contribution to the literary world." --Zel Levin, The Cape Codder.
