The Root of the Matter: The American Puritans Book One by Lynne Basham Tagawa
By Lynne Basham Tagawa
There are a lot of chocolate mentions in this new release. It’s historical, it’s time travel, and it’s even dystopian. And it’s got chocolate in it. What’s not to love?
The Root of the Matter: The American Puritans Book One got its birth when I read a snippet of John Winthrop’s very touching diary.
His wife Thomasine was dying. I was moved with the pathos of the telling. This was a “Puritan?”
I forgot about John Winthrop for years, until I began to write historical fiction. Winthrop came to mind again and again.
What were these people really like?
When it came time to write about them, I hesitated. I couldn’t write “straight” fiction. It was too hard. So I climbed inside the skin of someone I could understand, and let her have an adventure.
She’s terrified.
Time travel. The North Atlantic in winter. Which is worse?
Geneva Fielding is a researcher in the Archives of the Applied History department, prepping time travelers for their destinations. She loves the smell of old paper and chocolate croissants.
One day, a Traveler fails an important test and cannot go. Instead of canceling the Trip, the dean appoints Geneva and her friend Peter Donatelli, a physicist, to take his place. They have three days to prepare to Travel to 1630s New England.
Geneva’s always wanted to know more about John Winthrop. Maybe she can even get a dissertation topic from the Trip. But the truth is, she’s scared stiff. No one knows her private struggles. And she’s not about to tell.
Geneva and Peter are dumped into an early, struggling Massachusetts, the Puritan inhabitants having escaped the persecution of the Crown only to face a howling wilderness. Roger Williams’s arrival sends shockwaves through the frail colony.
Can the Bay Colony afford to allow a critic of the king to dwell among them?
And what will Geneva do when she discovers Peter’s secret?
From the chocolate croissants to the time travel, it was all fun to write. And Peter and Geneva have a relationship that gets closer over time.
But no spoilers!
Lynne Tagawa has four children and six grandchildren. She lives with her husband in South Texas and occasionally indulges in chocolate.
She’s written an eighteenth-century trilogy that does not include time travel. The Shenandoah Road and A Fallen Sparrow are Selah Award finalists.
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