The White

In 1758, when Mary Jemison is about sixteen, a Shawnee raiding party captures her Irish family near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Mary is the only one not killed and scalped. She is instead given to two Seneca sisters to replace their brother who was killed by whites. Emerging slowly from shock, Mary--now named Two-Falling-Voices--begins to make her home in Seneca culture and the wild landscape. She goes on to marry a Delaware, then a Seneca, and, though she contemplates it several times, never rejoins white society. Larsen alludes beautifully to the way Mary apprehends the brutality of both the white colonists and the native tribes; and how, open-eyed and independent, she thrives as a genuine American.

I read of Mary Jemeson first as a child in Lois Lenski's book, Indian Captive, a book I read many times. So I was interested in reading a different telling. And Deborah Larsen's telling was very different.

Larsen's tale has much more to do with Mary's inner journey than her outer one. We see Mary change and come to grips with her life --and the words are beautiful, almost poetic - but in the end we still don't have the answer to that nagging question -- why?

Mary seems to be simply captured by inertia. She is, and that in the end leaves us wanting - its like taking a bite of a rich pastry, getting a taste, but when you look for more - there's only air.

I expected more from this somehow. What I read was detached and dreamlike in the fact that it didn’t mesh to reality very well. It seemed that Mary didn’t really believe what was happening to her and recounted events dispassionately. Like she was describing what happened to another person.

All through the book we had paragraphs of inner monologue that seemed to be in an entirely different voice then the other paragraphs. At first I thought these were taken from the actual manuscript of Mary’s story, but they weren’t. They were just thoughts.

I didn't plan this, but this book fit well with The Unredeemed Captive which I read last year. This is a fictionalized account of another white woman who was captured by Indians and chose to stay with them, and who told her story late in life to a historian.

It's kind of a dull book, though. Not a whole lot happens except gathering and preparing food, with an occasional battle. Our heroine Mary of the Senecas is kind of a Mary Sue: red hair and blue eyes (of course). She's patient and kind, forgives her hateful father and her Indian captives, and teaches her children about the loving Great Spirit. She becomes a wise woman and shares her wisdom with a historian, humbling him with her forgiving spirit. Zzzzzzz.

Based on the life of an historical Indian captive, this is the story of Mary Jemison from her point of view as a captive who gradually integrates into the Indian way of life. Although the book contains descriptions of some of the terrible violence between Indian and European, the book focuses on Mary’s ability to overcome and master the worst situations without losing herself in hate and self pity.

Though based on the actual captivity narrative of a Mary Jamison in the 18th century, Larsen has her own Mary tell a tale. A beautiful, lyrical tale.

With a choppy start, this book ended up being an interesting read. The best parts in my opinion were the italized paragraphs, presumably quoted right from Mary. Very interesting, onlu took a couple of hours to read.