Richmond Heights Book Club Review: 'Caleb’s Crossing'

The book jacket and advertisements for Caleb’s Crossing present it as the story of the first Native American to graduate from Harvard, a Native face amongst the Puritan class of 1665.

However, Caleb Cheeshahteaumauck’s real-life story is merely the scaffolding upon which author Geraldine Brooks arranges the story of Bethia Mayfield, a fictional young Puritan girl who befriends Caleb, falls in love with him, and manages to follow him as he takes his journey from village medicine-boy-in-training to Harvard graduate, while she herself changes more completely and subtly in his wake. 

This book is really about Bethia’s crossing.

(Read more Richmond Heights Memorial Library Book Club reviews.)

Bethia starts as a devout, subservient Puritan girl—if a little too bright, a little too curious and a little too outspoken for her thoughtful father and hidebound brother. Brooks lets us experience the tragedies, injustices and stifling limits of Bethia’s world before her transformation begins. Brooks is careful to lay the groundwork for the journey from the beginning of the narrative by making Bethia intelligent, insightful and surprisingly open-minded and modern in her approach to the Native Americans of the island that will one day be called Martha’s Vineyard. 

Bethia immediately chafes against the limits with which her sex is burdened in Puritan society, even as she endeavors to embrace them as God’s will. To talk more about her transformation would be to reveal too much, as the book is about her transformation more than any other theme.

Much of the book’s richness lies in the descriptions of Bethia’s world and mindset. She shines in contrast to the Puritans around her—this is very much a work of self-righteous Puritans being caught in their hypocrisy when compared to the enlightenment of noble savages, to borrow the fraught phrasing of Romantic-era authors. 

The reader is invited to suffer her injustices, feel her losses, strain against her unrequited love, even as she voices these feelings with a becomingly subdued restraint that lends all the more weight to her experience. What starts as a historical romance of unrequited love does manage to reach beyond this theme to something larger, even if the Puritans and Natives never get the more nuanced treatment some readers may want.

Richmond Heights Memorial Library Book Club members enjoyed the book thoroughly, valuing its strengths over the often unavoidable weaknesses. Most said they would recommend it to others, with only one voice of cynical dissent.  Despite vigorous discussion, we still did not touch on many of the major features of the book—an excellent sign for any reader that wants a work worth thinking about.

One issue any student of history may be curious about is the language. Puritan writings are thick, rich and formal, often featuring a curious mix of complex sentence structures with pointed language, reflecting a complex yet dualistic mindset. 

If Brooks had written this first-person book in Puritan voice, it would be a difficult read. But she did not. Rather, it’s very much modern language, modern sensibilities, and modern themes—sometimes jarringly so—with a nod to Puritan writing in the form of substituting modern words for outdated versions; “salvages” for savages, “tegs” for sheep and so on. The result is easy to read, but with regular lexical reminders that we’re talking about another age and another mindset, even if that mindset is treated superficially.

Next month, we visit the crumbling aristocracy of 1930s England, as we discuss one of the great novels of the past century, Evelyn Waugh’s Handful of Dust.  See our website, rhml.lib.mo.us, for details.

The Richmond Heights Memorial Library Book Club meets the second Thursday of each month, from 7 to 8 pm, at The Heights, 8001 Dale Ave.  Please join us!