Blog Tour Guest Post: Crow Hollow by Michael Wallace

Please join me in welcoming author Michael Wallace to Let Them Read Books! Michael is touring the blogosphere with his brand new novel, Crow Hollow, a historical mystery set in Colonial America during the aftermath of a period of conflict between the New England settlers and the Native Americans known as King Philip's War. read on for some insight into the war's impact on the colonies and enter for a chance to win a paperback copy of Crow Hollow!

In 1676, an unlikely pair—a young Puritan widow and an English spy—journeys across a land where greed and treachery abound.

Prudence Cotton has recently lost her husband and is desperate to find her daughter, captured by the Nipmuk tribe during King Philip’s war. She’s convinced her daughter is alive but cannot track her into the wilderness alone. Help arrives in the form of James Bailey, an agent of the crown sent to Boston to investigate the murder of Prudence’s husband and to covertly cause a disturbance that would give the king just cause to install royal governors. After his partner is murdered, James needs help too. He strikes a deal with Prudence, and together they traverse the forbidding New England landscape looking for clues. What they confront in the wilderness—and what they discover about each other—could forever change their allegiances and alter their destinies.

Always Independent

by Michael Wallace

            Every American knows about the events of 1775, when American militia fired upon British troops in Concord and Lexington, beginning the process that would lead to the Declaration of Independence the following year and the defeat of General Cornwallis at Yorktown that finally secured American independence.

            What many people don’t realize is that the colonists of New England always considered themselves independent. The Mayflower Compact referred to the colonists as loyal subjects of King James, but it also gave itself complete power to determine its own laws and offices for self-governance. There was no provision for a royal governor or any other sort of control from England.

            The problem was, these supposedly independent colonists were still English through and through. They wanted autonomy from Crown and Parliament, but they were still embroiled in politics and religion back home. Hundreds returned to England to fight in the English Civil War in the struggle between the Puritan forces of Oliver Cromwell and the royalist opposition. When the French or the Dutch threatened, the colonists demanded full protection from the British Navy.

            For the most part, this arrangement worked. The colonies in North America were poor and underpopulated. The richer prizes were in the sugar plantation islands of the Caribbean, and in any event, it was useful to have an English buffer between the French in Quebec and the Spanish in Florida. Let the colonists squabble, let them resolve their own issues with the local tribes.

            But when a brutal, genocidal war broke out between the hard-pressed native tribes of New England and the English colonists who had been steadily pushing them back from the coasts, the autonomy of the colonies came into question. Most of the native population was wiped out in the war, and a dozen English settlements were destroyed. Ten percent of all English men of fighting age were killed. Thousands of Wampanoag, Narragansett, and others were killed or sold into slavery in the Caribbean, never to return. At one point, serious thought was given to abandoning New England altogether, were the native tribes to get the upper hand in the conflict. And even though the English won the war, larger, more powerful tribes such as the Iroquois lurked further inland.

            When King Philip’s war ended, the English Crown attempted to exert greater control. An Anglican church was established in Boston, ending the Puritan monopoly. Royal governors arrived. The charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was revoked in 1684. For the first time, nearly a century before the Revolutionary War, the colonists began to stir restlessly against the home country.

            It is into this post-war landscape that royal agent James Bailey arrives in my book Crow Hollow. He has been sent by the Crown to exert direct control of the restive New England colonies. What he doesn’t count on is a more complicated, treacherous environment than expected, and a beautiful young Puritan widow with the ability to bend his motives and desires.

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