Historical Biography of by Ruth Plimpton Best I've Read!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Dyer

Mary Dyer:
Biography of a
Rebel Quaker


By Ruth Plimpton


Review of 2011 Edition




I would imagine that anybody reading this will recognize the name Joan of Arc, but do you know the name of Mary Dyer? Perhaps the Catholic Church has a better publicist than other Christian sects (LOL), else we should surely know more about what happened to Mary Dyer and others who lived in the early 1600s as early settlers in America...

Where Mary Dyer, the only woman, and other men were also murdered--hanged--because of their beliefs...


Most of us know that freedom of religion was a major issue in America's founding principles. We do not, however, know the level of intolerance and the hatred that was placed on many individuals during that time. In fact, it is a sad commentary that intolerance of our beliefs has been and continues to be a major issue in our world...

I, for one, was totally appalled by what happened during the early years in America. On the other hand, reading these historical facts was spiritually enriching to me. Ruth Plimpton has created one of the best historically significant books I've had the honor to read.

It is fascinating to consider that many "left England with their own unshakable beliefs and, once in New England, created laws to get rid of anyone who did not conform with their religious interpretations." (p. 11)

Mary and her husband William were just one couple who traveled to America. For Mary, especially, there was a personal spiritual journey that led her ultimately to leave her husband's presence (although still married) and travel to learn more about what she believed. Ultimately, she became a Quaker and it was her faith that led her to accept death rather than to reject what she had grown to believe.

While William never did become a Quaker, he never stopped loving Mary. He also fought his own battle against the prejudice that was routinely leading to whippings, banishment, and even death. Against the background of religious upheaval, we find that much of New England was being expanded to the South and new communities were springing up either with support and charter by England or, initially, by sale of land to the settlers by the Indians.

The main area of intolerance was located in Boston where Puritan law had been firmly established and based entirely on the Old Testament, "as interpreted by the magistrates and ministers of the colony." All civil law derived from the church. One of the better known men who questioned what was happening was Roger Williams when he refused to take an oath of loyalty to the Colony.

It was the women of the colony who first began what was to lead to the first major division. Mary Dyer had a friend by the name of Anne Hutchinson. Of course, much was denied women at that time, so while doing the duties that were considered "women's work"; i.e., to fetch water, "bucket by bucket, day after day" the spring became a natural meeting place for them to talk. Many times, the discussion centered on what they had been most recently taught in church.

But then Anne Hutchinson opened her home for more indepth discussions. Soon those discussions were drawing women from all surrounding areas...and men began to attend! Those who had attended these gatherings were sharing a religion based upon "salvation by grace"  and the inspirational messages were of "love, joy, and service to mankind found in the New Testament. (p. 39)

Soon, it was this group that were under attack...Many packed up and left and moved into what is now Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Reading about their living with the Indians, as well as watching a new land being developed is exciting as well as informative. The book is well written, with many relevant pictures and supporting references. 

Historians...this is a must-read for you. For believers of all faiths, there is a lesson to be learned from Mary Dyer and others who died so that we might today have the freedom to express our own beliefs. A truly important addition to America's historical documentation!

Book Received

from Publisher

GABixlerReviews@aol.com

Mary Dyer : Biography of a Rebel Quaker

Would Rogue Island Be as Great if Set in Another State?

Image via Wikipedia

I set my new crime novel in Providence, Rhode Island...because

 
By Bruce DeSilva
 
 
 
This essay first appeared on a great blog called The Outfit, a collective of Chicago crime writers. When Sean Chercover, author of “Trigger City,” invited me to write something as a guest, I decided to explain why I chose Providence instead of Chicago, a city I love, as the setting for my first crime novel.
The most memorable crime novels transport you to interesting places and let you hear, see, smell, and taste them.

Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley, James Ellroy, and Michael Connelly have shown you Los Angeles through the decades. Read James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels and you have been to New Iberia, LA, even if you’ve never left your house. It is difficult to imagine Ken Bruen’s best novels set anywhere but in his native Galway.

As my friend, the crime novelist Thomas H. Cook, once said, “If you want to understand the importance of place, imagine Heart of Darkness without the river.”

The writers who regularly grace this blog provide a guided tour through the great city of Chicago—a city I have come to love. Through the years, I’ve gotten to know it from Wrigley Field to Comiskey Park and from Pilsen to the Loop. My wife, the poet Patricia Smith, grew up a West Side girl.

So when I wrote my first crime novel, Rogue Island, I decided to set the story in . . . Providence, Rhode Island.

Please allow me to defend myself.

This summer, Newsweek crowned New Jersey the most corrupt state in America. (Nice try, Illinois.) But the magazine declared that Rhode Island was the most corrupt per capita. There is nothing new in this. You can trace the smallest state’s culture of crime and political corruption all the way back to one of the first colonial governors dining with Captain Kidd.

For more than a hundred years, pirates slipped from Narragansett Bay’s hidden coves to prey on merchant shipping. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Rhode Island shipmasters dominated the American slave trade. During the French and Indian War and again during the Revolution, privateers skulked out of Providence and Newport to seize prizes with little regard for the flags they flew. After the Civil War, Boss Anthony kept his Republican machine in power by buying votes at the going rate of two bucks apiece. At the turn of the century, Rhode Island’s own Sen. Nelson Aldrich helped the robber barons plunder the country. In the 1950s and 1960s, a Providence mobster named Raymond L.S. Patriarca was the most powerful man in New England, deciding everything from who lived and died to what songs got played on the radio. And more recently, Providence Mayor Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci Jr. did federal time for conspiring to operate a criminal enterprise, a.k.a. the city of Providence.

One of the many quirks of Rhode Island history is that no one knows how the state got its name, although historians have come up with several half-baked theories. According to one of them, the name derives from the fact that the state resembles the Isle of Rhodes. The only problem with that one is: It doesn’t.

My favorite theory is that “Rhode Island” is a bastardization of “Rogue Island,” a name the God-fearing farmers of colonial Massachusetts bestowed upon the nest of pirates, heretics, and smugglers who first settled the shores of Narragansett Bay. Hence, the title of my novel, Rogue Island. I decided not to go with the Cotton Mather’s pet name for Providence: “The sewer of New England.”

However, Rhode Island and its capital also share a culture of decency and integrity that began with its gentle founder, Roger Williams. The competing strands of good and evil wind all the way thorough the state’s history, and the tension between them makes for great storytelling.

But that’s not the only reason I set my tale in Providence.

Most crime novels unfold in big, anonymous cities like New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and, of course, Chicago. There are also many fine mysteries set in rural areas. But Providence is something different.

The city is large enough to have the usual array of urban problems, and it’s surprisingly cosmopolitan; yet it’s so small that it’s claustrophobic. In fact, the whole state is so tiny that you can almost throw a baseball across it. Nearly everybody you meet on the street knows your name, and it’s almost impossible to keep a secret.

In Rogue Island, my main character, an investigative reporter named Mulligan, needs to have a face-to-face meeting with a cop. The two don’t want to be seen together, so they have a hard time figuring out where to go. Finally they pick a sleazy strip club in a bad part of town. No one there is likely to know them, they think; but as soon as they walk in, someone shouts: “Hey, Mulligan! How ya doin’?”

Mulligan is paid to root out corruption. But he was born in Providence. He is not just from but of this place. So while he digs to uncover the truth, he’s not above placing a bet with a mobbed-up bookie or paying a small bribe to get his decrepit Bronco through the annual state inspection. As Mulligan sees it, graft comes in two varieties, good and bad, just like cholesterol. The bad kind enriches greedy politicians and their rich friends at taxpayers’ expense. The good kind supplements the wages of underpaid state workers, putting braces on their kids’ teeth. Without the lubrication of good graft, Mulligan says, not much would get done in Rhode Island, and nothing at all would happen on time.

I strove to make the city of Providence and the state of Rhode Island not just the setting but something more akin to characters in Rogue Island. According to one reviewer, my portrayal of the place is “jaundiced but affectionate”—and that puts it exactly right.

I just finished the sequel, tentatively titled Cliff Walk, and it, too, is set in Rhode Island. But once the third book in the series is written, I’m going to co-write a crime novel with my wife. It’s going to be set in Chicago—on the West Side.












Used by Permission
of Author

Related articles

• Rhode Island To Vote On Name Change (npr.org)
• Can a Name Change for Rhode Island Heal Old Wounds? (theroot.com)

Review: Rogue Island - Crime Thriller at Its Best!

Image by rhondda.p via Flickr

Rogue Island

By Bruce DeSilva






A Forge Book

ISBN: 9780765327260

302 Pages





Agreeing to review the first novel for Associated Press’s Bruce DeSilva was a little daunting for this independent reviewer, but after learning that it had taken Ed McBain, who wrote the 87th Precinct novels and then Otto Penzler, the dean of NYC crime-novel editors to encourage him to finish his novel, and after getting over my initial excitement when I received it, I figured Bruce would expect me to do just what I always do—tell my readers how I honestly felt about his book!

Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva had an “old” flavor to me, one I immediately felt comfortable with—could I really see shades of Mike Hammer in Mulligan’s style of investigating and hear Robert B. Parker's Spenser’s witty dialogue as Mulligan quipped back his quick thoughts or was Mulligan and entirely new man I had to get to know and love? Which I did...

Or did I admire most his desire to find the truth amidst all of the corruption surrounding him, even while fighting a losing battle, as proven by his ending?

Of course, Ed McBain had been right! Bruce DeSilva’s novel is a thrilling addition to crime fiction, that reads as if Mulligan has been alive and well for many years! And I’m hoping that he will continue in future books as the tenacious investigative reporter who still believes in printing the true story, no matter what...

Take his “Dumb and Dumber” caricature story for the two arson investigators who were supposed to be working to solve an epidemic of major fires in Mount Hope, Rhode Island. There had already been nine arsons in three months with five dead. Mulligan was seeing his community, his friends, losing their homes or businesses and he knew, since Polecki and Roselli had paid their way upward and then were moved to get them away from dealing with the public, that these men were not going to find the firebug or whoever was responsible. So after outing their incompetence in headlines, Mulligan began his own investigation.

While Max Lomax would be on Mulligan’s back to write the “Dog Story,” Mulligan would whistle for Secretariat to come give him a ride, shrug at his failure to gallop to him, and then walk to his Ford Bronco. Then he'd take off to talk to his friend, the fire insurance investigator, to begin brainstorming what was really behind the fires. Even the local bookmaker was concerned enough that he formed a local group, the DiMaggios to prowl the streets with baseball bats, while he, himself, sat in his private room, in his shirt, tie and boxer shorts, taking bets. They called him Whoosh for a reason! Trading information with Whoosh while Mulligan placed a bet was just part of everyday life...

Just like his friends Whoosh and Rosie the fire chief, and Lomax, Gloria and Veronica, with whom Mulligan might be falling in love, DeSilva has created characters worthy of the gutsy and sometimes dangerous newspaper world of yesterday, while he laments the possible future for newspapers in today’s world. Though his book highlights this potential loss, Bruce DeSilva, in Rogue Island has provided readers with a dynamic invasive look into the power of crime and corruption and how far it pervades our society—and even how to use it to help make things better, under the circumstances...Right?

Frankly, I think this is one hell of a book! Highly recommended!

Book Received
From publisher

G. A. Bixler

Rogue Island  Pre-Order Available in October! Link with Bruce DeSilva at Facebook and read more, by clicking title of article...