The following is an excerpt from a history book by an American professor writing in the 1990s. In a couple of paragraphs, the writer conveys a young woman’s lifetime of angst that has led her to complete submission to her (at first unwanted) surroundings. The excerpt shows how a good writer can put you, the modern-day reader, into the mind of someone who lived long ago.

A stylish ProofreadNOW t-shirt goes to the person who can identify the author and the work.

Send your guess to info@ProofreadNOW.com!

The characters:

“she,” “her”: a white girl in her teens, taken captive years earlier as a three-year-old, now married to a Kahnawake brave

“the trader”: her father’s representative, attempting to negotiate her return

“her English father”: her real father, a Puritan minister, taken captive with her and her English family, released years ago (her mother was tomahawked by her captors on their journey north on foot during winter)

Scene: A Kahnawake village outside Quebec, under the oversight of French priests

____________________________________________________________

So the trader would be here, this very afternoon. She had talked with the headmen, with the priests, with her family: all had assured her that she would be kept safe. Her husband would be with her the whole time; a priest would see the trader first and explain her position. Her home was now the village; her people were the Kahnawake. She would not go back to her English father, not now, not ever.

Her English father: what claim could he possibly make on her anyway? With a clarity born of old bitterness, she remembered the last times she had seen him.

She remembered his coming to the village when she was still a small child—feeling scared and strange, and gripped inside by the ties of her old life. She had begged him then to take her away, but he had failed her utterly. A prayer; some empty words of comfort; a sorrowful good-bye. In her mind’s eye she could still see the back of his bowed head, the heaviness in his step, as he trudged off toward the river.

She remembered the long journey through the forest, up from Deerfield. At first, she had clung to him tightly, as a squirrel clings to a tree; but weak as he was, and clumsy on his snowshoes, he could not walk for the two of them. Then a kind, strong man from the village—a man she knew now as her uncle Hatironta—had swept her up and set her atop his own broad shoulders. And in that position she had traveled almost the entire route to Montreal. When, from time to time, she had turned her head for a glimpse to the rear, she had seen her father lurching heavily through the drifts, falling back, gasping, calling out for rest. The Kahnawake had laughed and joked about him. This tall man with the fine clothes and finer words, this great leader of the “Bastonnais,” this favorite of God: how he had been brought low! Her sorrow for him had turned to pity, and finally to shame.

And there was more. The journey had been with a terror so extreme that her memory could not sort out the details. But strangely disconnected images remained—images that included herself as though seen by someone else. Herself shocked from sleep, and flung out of bed, in a pitch-dark room—as intruders smashed in the door. Herself squeezed with her English brothers and sisters (shadowy figures now) beneath a bench against a wooden wall. Herself amidst a disordered throng in the meetinghouse, prisoners awaiting an unknown fate. Herself frozen on a trail by a winding river—what trail? what river?—as her mother—what mother?—was led off to be killed. Her father was there, too: there in the dark room, struggling vainly to fire his gun; there in the meetinghouse, eyes raised toward an apparently indifferent God; there by the riverside, helplessly bidding her mother good-bye. (Had he really taken another wife, so soon after his return?) Faithless, forgetful father: protector who could not protect, comforter who would not comfort, caretaker who did not care.

All that was behind her now, far behind. Yet the trader’s coming had brought it back, like the embers of an old fire stirred to life beneath the ash. The priests said she must see him, must give him a hearing. All right: she would see, she would hear. But they couldn’t make her speak. Silence would be her reply; its meaning would be clear enough.