Beyond - Popham Colony: The first English settlement in New England

Thirteen years before the Mayflower, five Native Americans are kidnapped and taken to England. One of them, Skidwarres, spends two years learning all things English. His tutor, Richard, a young Oxford educated gentleman, sails back with him to the New World, along with 140 English soldiers, craftsmen, and adventurers. At the mouth of the Kennebec River, in what is now Maine, they erect the first English settlement north of Jamestown. Little is known and much is speculated about this earliest of colonial footprints. In Dick Seymour's first novel, historical fact is woven with adventure and romance. Why did the colonist abandon their fort? Did the native Mawooshen welcome the English? What of Sir John Popham's death and missing body? How do the Popham colonists survive a devastatingly cold winter? If the first Thanksgiving began in Maine, might it have been raucous? How does the friendship between Skidwarres and Richard fair, given they represent cultures that must inevitably clash? Does Richard's hurried engagement to Margaret survive the temptations he faces in the New World? Beyond explores English and Mawooshen's proclivities at the dawn of colonization. The story includes the vicissitudes of matters military, political, commercial, cultural, and sexual. End notes provide the reader a means for differentiating fact from fancy.