News ReleaseFor Immediate Release Date: 4/26/02Contact: Mary Dolheimer, 717-337-6801, [email protected]
Gettysburg College professor writes novel about young PA woman kidnapped in 1758
GETTYSBURG, Pa. -- A Gettysburg College professor has written a book about a young woman who, in 1758, was taken by a Shawnee raiding party from her home near what would become Gettysburg.
"The White," by Deborah Larsen Cowan (publishing as Deborah Larsen), is based upon the life of Mary Jemison and will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in July. The Book-of-the-Month Club has recently chosen the book, along with one other book, as their Dual Main Selection for the month of August.
"When I moved to Gettysburg, I heard that Buchanan Valley had been the scene of the capture of a young white woman by a raiding party in the 18th century," Cowan said. "Then a friend told me that the true story of Mary Jemison's subsequent adoption by the Seneca had been published and that we had a copy of it in the Gettysburg College library. I read the book by James Seaver and was incredulous: a fabulous life lay beneath the stiff prose in that account."
"The White" tells of Jemison enduring the brutal scalpings of her parents and siblings and then being given to two Seneca sisters who treat her as their own -- a symbolic replacement for the brother they lost to the white colonists. Renamed Two-Falling-Voices, she gradually becomes integrated into her new family, learning to assist with the hunt and to cultivate corn. She marries a Delaware warrior, raises a family in her adoptive culture, and eventually fulfills her lifelong dream to own land.
"Now, perhaps more than ever, a story about a fascinating American -- in this case, a woman -- who actually flourishes psychologically in a tumultuous time, can provide entertainment, meditation and hope for readers," Cowan noted.
The Merle S. Boyer Chair in Poetry, Cowan teaches creative writing at Gettysburg College. She has also served as a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford and a Wallace Stevens Fellow at Yale. Her collection of poetry, "Stitching Porcelain," was published in 1991, and her poems and short stories have appeared in publications such as "The Nation," "The Yale Review," "The Quarterly," "Oxford Magazine" and "The New Yorker."
-30-
RSS