A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke - Softcover

Horn, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465024904 ISBN 13: 9780465024902

Publisher: Basic Books, 2011

Synopsis

The "gripping adventure story" (Christian Science Monitor) of the Lost Colony of Roanoke and the mystery at the center of the American founding
In 1587, John White led 118 English men, women, and children to Roanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina, intending to establish the first English colony in America. Faced with dwindling supplies and hostile Indians, they soon found themselves struggling to survive. White returned to England for help, but when he returned to Roanoke in 1590, the colonists were nowhere to be found; never saw his friends or family again. Their disappearance has remained a mystery for four centuries, but as James Horn reveals in A Kingdom Strange, some from the party survived. Their descendants were discovered a century later, a living testament to America's remarkable origins.

About this title

About the Author:

James Horn is the president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation. He is author and editor of five books on colonial American history, including A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America and 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy. He lives in Richmond, Virginia.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. A leading historian of early Virginia, Horn (A Land as God Made It) relates the convoluted, fascinating story of the failed 1598 venture on Roanoke Island: a British settlement whose 100 men, women, and children disappeared without a trace. Horn teases from the record as no one before the Lost Colony of 1587, which had not even been intended to settle on the island. Horn recounts its travails, hostilities with the Indians, requests to England for support that failed to arrive for three years, by which time the settlers were gone. Based on the available evidence, Horn finds that the colonists did not die but intermarried with local Indians. Over a century later, a North Carolina settler, venturing to Roanoke Island, found Indians who claimed Englishmen among their ancestors (and some gray-eyed tribesmen seemed to support the claim). He places it all in the context of the political and economic tumult of the time for an outstanding historical mystery/adventure tale with an ending perhaps less tragic than historians have long believed. Illus. (Apr.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0465024904
• ISBN 13: 9780465024902
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320