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THE WIDOW'S WAR and BOUND

By Sally Gunning
Harper Paperbacks (2007 & 2008)

Sally Gunning mined the history of Brewster, Massachusetts to produce two novels with period authenticity, compelling plots and characters that are believable human beings. These virtues alone are enough to recommend them to genre fans, but Gunning's work deserves a wider audience. In addition to entertaining, she illuminates dark corners of American history. Set years before Concord, Lexington and revolution, her theme is freedom and equality under the law. Her subjects are women who enjoy neither.

The Widow's War begins as the door of a shingled cottage flies open and a fisherman is roused with the cry, "Blackfish in the bay!" With time for nothing more than a smile for wife Lyddie, Edward Berry rushes off to make his living...and ends up dying.

Edward and Liddy Berry were long married. Each understood there was a level on which they lived lives apart. At the same time, strong elements cemented their union including sex, children, and the hard work required to maintain their spare, but adequate home.

As Lyddie experiences the emotional devastation wrought by Edward's death, she is forced to grapple with the reality of her material survival. With no husband, responsibility for her maintenance has fallen to her nearest male relation, son-in-law Nathan Clarke.

Clarke is ambitious, materialistic and insensitive. He intends to sell off the Berry property to pocket a profit, but first, he must get Lyddie to sign away the rights to her widow's portion. Lyddie refuses, desiring only to continue in her own home. Nathan fights dirty.

Gunning's Lyddie is no cliché heroine with before-her-time vision. She is intelligent, but uneducated, independant, yet firmly rooted in her own time. Lyddie prevails with quiet courage, but she pays the price. She suffers poverty; frays the relationship with her only living child and is kept from beloved grandchildren. Estranged from religion, she becomes an outcast in small town society.

Lyddie stumbles on an ally in her late husband's lawyer, Eben Freeman. He explains legal details that help the widow avoid being duped by Clarke at the get-go. Freeman is attracted to Lyddie, but her unconventional course troubles him. He wants to secure her welfare, but she rebuffs him. I found their complex relationship an unexpected delight.

The plight of Alice Cole, the indentured servant of Bound, is grittier and harder to enjoy. Indenture was the enslavement of lower class whites by contract for a period of years. We meet Alice at the age of seven on a voyage with her family fleeing the poverty of London for the New World. First, her mother sickens and dies. Her two brothers follow. Her father is all Alice has left in the world when she embarks at Boston. He sells her to a widower named Morton to pay transportation costs.

Alice is taken to her master's home in Dedham Where he has a daughter, Nabby, a few years older than Alice. The girls become bosom companions. Alice is treated kindly, well fed, well clothed and even educated equally. She indeed enjoys good fortune, until Morton's daughter marries Emery Verley.

To ease the pain of separation for Nabby, Morton signs over Alice's contract and she goes with the newlyweds to Verley's home in Medford. There she is routinely raped and beaten by Verley. Nabby, confused and hurt by her husband's unconcealed appetite for Alice, lashes out and strikes her girlhood companion viciously.

This blow that sets Alice running. Bewildered and frightened, she reasons that if she returns to Mr. Morton, tells him what hppened, shows him her wounds, he will protect her. She is mistaken.

Alice walks to Boston, a place she vaguely remembers, determined to get away. Making her way to the docks, she spies a boat preparing to leave harbor and she hides below deck. She escapes to a Cape Cod with a fabricated history and her life becomes entwined with those of Lyddie Berry and Eben Freeman.

Some months pass and Alice finds herself pregnant by her rapist. Terrified of being cast out, she hides her condition until she goes into labor. Lyddie goes for help and Alice is alone for the birth. When the widow and midwife arrive they find the baby dead and Alice nearly so. Once recovered enough to get out of bed, Alice is jailed and tried for fornication and murder.

Freeman the lawyer defends her, but Alice's freedom remains in jeopardy. Newspaper ads offering a reward for her capture, placed by the aggrieved Verley, have made their way to the town. Eben's duty compels him to take Alice to the Boston court, a decision that further traumatizes Alice, angers Lyddie and fills Freeman himself with trepidation. If the court finds for Verley, Alice will be returned to her abuser. Her contract will be extended for the period her master was deprived of her services, and time could be added as punishment.

Gunning's subtly powerful fiction gives voice to unequal lives absent from America's creation myth. The uncomfortable truth is that our nation's founders were white men of property who wrote law to protect themselves and their interests. Native Americans, Blacks, the poor and women were disenfranchised and fair game for exploitation. This bears remembering two hundred and thirty-odd years into our experiment in democracy, because things have not entirely changed.