A teenage girl escapes from the famine of Jamestown with a
small sack of tools, including flint, a knife, and a cup. She dons the boots of a smallpox victim and
heads out into the frozen wilderness.
Already starving before embarking on this adventure, food is hard to
come by, and she has to take her chances choosing leaves, berries, and
mushrooms that she hopes will not kill her.
This story of survival inspired me to familiarize myself a bit with the
history of Jamestown and why they couldn’t feed themselves. Basically, their supply ships got caught in
hurricanes, or the ships brought more people than supplies. Plus, the English colonists had no experience
with agriculture. I’m not much of a
history buff, but I found this fatal example of poor planning to be
fascinating. Anyway, back to our girl
trying to put some distance between herself and the failed settlement, which
can hardly be called civilized. She has had
various appellations, including Lamentations and Zed, but she contemplates
naming herself, just as Adam named all the animals, according to the
Bible. In fact, when she’s not dodging
wolves, bears, native Americans, and another escapee, she ponders the validity
of the religion she has always known. Her physical struggle to say alive may get
top billing here, but her suffering began long before, and her constant
reassessment of life’s essentials is almost as impressive as her
resourcefulness.
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