Tag Archives: Lost Colony

by | March 28, 2013

Antony John. Elemental. New York: Dial Books, 2012.

In the future, there will be a plague so great that it almost wipes the entirety of the human race off the planet. Sixteen-year-old Thomas lives with a small band of fourteen survivors, including his father and his brothers, Ananias and Griffin. This post-apocalyptic world is all Thomas has ever known, but like many teenagers today, Thomas feels as though he doesn’t belong. While everyone else in their small colony on Hatteras Island can control the four elements in some way, Thomas has no power. The others even seem afraid to touch him, as though his lack of power is contagious. Then, one stormy day, everything changes.

The adult Guardians (as they call themselves) have failed to predict a terrible storm. Quickly, Thomas and the other children flee to a shelter on the abandoned wasteland of Roanoke Island. But when they try to return, they discover something far more horrifying than a storm’s damage– their families have been kidnapped by pirates. Vowing to resist, the youngsters retreat back to Roanoke Island. With each passing day, they discover that their powers grow stronger and stronger, and that they possess more and different abilities than they ever thought. Spying on the pirates reveals still more– there is something special about Griffin, Thomas’ younger brother, and the pirates want him enough to kill. Although Thomas knows he doesn’t have a power, he has also been feeling stranger and stranger the longer they stay on Roanoke. Is it possible that the Guardians lied as well when they said he didn’t have a power? And if he does, what could his power be?

A gripping take on the legend of the Lost Colony, this dystopian novel brings the past to life in a future just as haunted by pirates, disease, and mysteries as the 16th century.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010-2019, 2012, Children & Young Adults, Coast, Dare, John, Antony, Novels in Series, Science Fiction/Fantasy

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by | November 11, 2011

Paul Clayton. White Seed: The Untold Story of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. [Bangor, ME]: Booklocker.com, 2009.

White Seed follows the journey of the settlers of the Lost Colony, the third group sent to the Americas by Sir Walter Raleigh, as they fight to survive on what is now the North Carolina coast. But who would be daring, or desperate, enough to abandon his or her homeland, England, for the wilds of the Virginia Colony?

Maggie Hagger, a simple Irish girl running from a terrible deed, seeks indentured passage as a means of escape from the faceless man who pursues her. Accepted as a maidservant for Governor John White’s pregnant daughter Eleanor Dare, Maggie has no idea that she may be trading one death sentence for another. Thomas and Lionel, her erstwhile companions, flee from similarly unsavory fates in England, while others, like the greedy Portuguese captain Simon Fernandes, seek only the opportunity to take what fortune they can from the Natives or fat Spanish ships. As for Governor White, he plans to live out his days peacefully in the tranquil Chesapeake, where the Natives are friendly and the land is mild. But all these hopes are dashed when they are put ashore in Roanoke.

There, a bellicose chieftain, Powhatan, has already determined that he will capture and kill any English who return to his land. He is especially reliant on Towaye, the spy he instructed to be captured before the last English returned to their native land. Now Towaye is back with these new settlers, although he finds himself under the watchful eye of Manteo, a Native loyal to the English who raised him from a child in this interpretation of the tale. But Powhatan isn’t the settlers’ only problem. When John White returns to England for supplies, conditions begin to deteriorate, and soon Maggie, Thomas, Manteo, and others find themselves fighting not one, but two enemies: the angry Natives…and their own soldiers.

Readers will enjoy this fast-paced, epic account of the Lost Colony’s still-unknown fate, and will find the author’s artistic choices to be interesting deviations from accepted research and other fictional versions.

Check the availability of this title in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library’s catalog.

 

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Clayton, Paul, Coast, Dare, Historical

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by | October 7, 2011

Richard Folsom. Indian Wood. [United States: BookSurge?], 2009.

Is it possible that three people were murdered because of something they found on an old reel of microfilm?  That’s what newspaperman Luther Surles wants to find out in this mystery that moves between the Court of Queen Elizabeth I and present day Greenville and Lumberton, North Carolina.

Carl Burden and Luther Surles met when they were covering a Klan rally in Robeson County in 1958. Carl was a cub reporter; Luther had been a newspaperman for a few years.  Luther stayed in journalism, but Carl went to graduate school and eventually became a history professor at East Carolina University.  Carl’s research interest is the Lost Colony and a possible connection between the colonists and the Lumbee Tribe.

Carl’s new graduate student, the lovely Roberta Locklear, is also interested in a Lost Colony-Lumbee connection, and soon both Carl’s research and his love life heat up.  But Roberta has her own history, and Luther begins to suspect that some piece of that ties into Carl’s murder.  This novel moves weaves stories of the wars, exploitation, and double-dealing of earlier centuries with a very twenty-first century story of property development and greed.  As a bonus, the book contains a novel-within-a-novel–Carl’s historical novella on the Lost Colony.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Coast, Coastal Plain, Cumberland, Dare, Folsom, Richard, Greene, Historical, Mystery, Robeson

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by | December 20, 2010

Lisa Klein. Cate of the Lost Colony. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010.

The death of Catherine Archer’s father in 1583 prompts Queen Elizabeth to invite her to Whitehall to be one of her maids of honor. While in London, Catherine (nicknamed Cat by the Queen) meets Sir Walter Ralegh and becomes enchanted by him. The two secretly begin writing poems of love to each other, and Catherine dreams of joining him in the New World.

However, Catherine and Ralegh’s clandestine relationship comes to a quick end when the queen finds the letters and abruptly sends Catherine to the Tower of London as punishment for her betrayal. Later, thinking that she has found an even stiffer penalty, Queen Elizabeth orders her prisoner to the Virginia settlement. Although the queen believes this to be a hard sentence, Catherine is excited to see America – even if she is without Ralegh.

After enduring months at sea, Cate (as she likes to be called now) and the rest of the Roanoke Island settlers arrive in the New World. Unfortunately, relations between the English and the Native Americans are tense. Conditions are not what were expected, and the expedition leaders return to London for aid, promising to return quickly. Cate works with Manteo, the Croatan translator, in trying to mediate between the two groups. Manteo and Cate feel a mutual understanding, and a trusting relationship develops between them.  Although the English fight in the beginning, they soon realize that while they wait for rescue they must live peacefully among the Croatans to survive.

Three years after Cate and her fellow settlers arrived on Roanoke Island, an English ship carrying their rescuers arrive. However, they are happy living among the Croatans and refuse to return to England. Although their rescuers, including Sir Walter Ralegh, do not understand why they are determined to stay, they depart without them. It is agreed that the Englishmen will not speak of their interaction with the settlers, simply saying that they were not found and their fate is a mystery.

This story is recounted through the perspectives of Catherine Archer, Sir Walter Ralegh, and Manteo. Lisa Klein provides an interesting ending to the tale of the Lost Colony.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Children & Young Adults, Coast, Dare, Historical, Klein, Lisa

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by | March 6, 2009

Margaret Lawrence. Roanoke. New York: Delacorte Press, 2009.

Gabriel North, a young man employed by Lord Burghley, is known to have a way with women. In an attempt to avoid war with the Native Americans at Roanoke, Burghley sends North there to seduce the Secota princess, Naia.  The English are convinced that the tribe controls gold mines and pearls beds, and they want those resources for themselves. North goes with Ralph Lane’s 1585 expedition, but the results are not what North’s handlers wanted.  In an attempt to make things right, North returns with John White’s colonizing expedition in 1587. The story is narrated by Robert Mowbray, another one of Burghley’s spies, and the action moves back and forth between America and England.  The mixed intentions, misunderstandings, physical deprivations, cruelty, and bad luck that attended the English on Roanoke are well portrayed, along with betrayals on both sides of the Atlantic.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Coast, Dare, Historical, Lawrence, Margaret

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by | November 19, 2008

James Pendleton. Drinkwater’s Folly. Raleigh, NC: Ivy House Publishing Group, 2007.

In the summer of 1966 Patricia Randal flees an abusive marriage and returns to Roanoke Island.  There she works as a journalist and gets to know a wide rage of folks–longtime residents, fishermen, summer people, cast members of The Lost Colony.  Unfortunately, 1966 is no summer of love for the Outer Banks.  A police officer preys on women driving late at night, racial tensions are increasing, and the conflicts between year-round residents and summer people seem sharper than in years past.  When the son of a local family is killed in Vietnam, protests reflecting unhappiness with the war and the racial status quo unsettle the locals.  Patricia’s decision to share her house with Karen Godwin, the daughter of a United States senator, exposes them both to new temptations and dangers. By the summer’s end, Patricia will come to terms with her past and set herself on the road to a full life, but for others the summer will bring only heartache and destruction.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2007, Coast, Dare, Pendleton, James, Piedmont

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by | October 23, 2008

E.A.B.S. (E. A. B. Shackelford). Virginia Dare: A Romance of the Sixteenth Century. New York: Thomas Whittaker, 1892.

In this version of the Lost Colony story, most of the English settlers are killed, but Virginia Dare survives. In 1607, she goes north to Powhatan’s country, but the Jamestown settlers never learn of her existence. The remnants of Manteo’s tribe become Christians, and Virgina marries Manteo’s son Iosco.

Check this title’s availability and access an online copy through the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 1890-1899, 1892, Coast, Novels to Read Online, Religious/Inspirational, Shackelford, E. A. B.

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by | September 26, 2008

William Farquhar Payson. John Vytal: A Tale of the Lost Colony. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1901.

This alternative telling of the Lost Colony story adds some new figures, including 16th century bad-boy dramatist Christopher Marlowe and the main character, Captain John Vytal. Spanish invaders, hostile Native Americans, and internal dissent doom the colony. Marlowe returns to England and meets his fate at that tavern in Deptford. White Doe (Virginia Dare), Dark Eyes (Manteo’s son) and Eleanor Dare flee to the forest, along with Vytal who has long pined for Eleanor.

Check this title’s availability and access an online copy through the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 1900-1909, 1901, Coast, Dare, Historical, Novels to Read Online, Payson, William Farquhar

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by | July 17, 2008

Mary Virginia Wall. The Daughter of Virginia Dare. New York: Neale Publishing Co., 1908.

Virginia Dare is the lone survivor of the Lost Colony. Against her will, she becomes the consort of Powhatan and bears him a daughter, Pocahontas. After this interesting Tar Heel prelude, the novel relates the standard stories of Pocahontas, Jamestown, and John Smith.

Check this title’s availability and access an online copy through the UNC-Chapel Hill Library Catalog.

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Filed under 1900-1909, 1908, Coast, Dare, Historical, Novels to Read Online, Wall, Mary Virginia

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by | April 14, 2008

Deborah Homsher. The Rising Shore–Roanoke. Blue Hull Press, 2007.

The Rising Shore–Roanoke recounts the story of the Lost Colony from the perspective of two of its female members: Elenor White Dare, the daughter of expedition leader John White, and her servant Margaret Lawrence. Elenor longs to explore and paint pictures of Virginia, as her father has done, while Margaret seeks her own path to independence. Left out of the formal power structure due to their gender, these women are sometimes frustrated by circumstance and tradition, but they move boldly, struggling alongside the other settlers and facing adventures in the wilderness. Although the true fate of the colony remains unknown, Homsher puts forth one possibility in this historical novel.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2007, Coast, Dare, Historical, Homsher, Deborah

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