The White

Deborah Larsen creates a lyrical novel based upon the life of Mary Jemison, who was abducted by a Shawnee raiding party in 1758. When she was in her 80's, Mary told her story to James Seaver who authored a book based upon Mary's life. Larsen alternates between Mary's voice, dreamy and poetic, and details of what did and what might have happened. Even as her life as a "white" fades, she finds passages from the Bible entering her head to explain her life as a Seneca woman. "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest... For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" For me this saying of the Lord's was fulfilled in my life among the Seneca." For a while, Mary mourns her loss of the ability to read and write and then she realizes that "She loved the open air and the contrasts of its temperatures; earth dry and sodden, loamy and rock-like; fire and its warmth and scorch; water cleansing and flooding. The closer she came to these things the more she realized that words were not the same as the real wild onion, the actual rabbit fur, the coiled fern frond, the lightning." Mary lives much of her life in the Genesse Valley of Pennsylvania with her husband, children, house and land. Slowly, the whites move into the area, peacefully settling nearby. The beauty of fictionalized accounts is that a fine author such as Deborah Larsen brings to us a warm, living picture to embrace and remember. by Judith Helburn for StorycircleBookReviews www.storycirclebookreviewsorg reviewing books by, for, and about women

When my sister-in-law, VP Operations for Messiah College, told me about this book, I just had to read it. Being a Pennsylvania native and having been educated early in grade school about the native American heritage of Pennsylvania, this book fit in. At Messiah College, before coming to campus all first-year students were expected to read a novel which would draw them together and allow them to identify with one another in the familiarity of the novel's message and themes. "The White" was the novel chosen for the class of 2010. "The White" with its strong focus on the themes of identity, family and the security strangely found in the non-familiar, is an excellent book to bring readers together. In short, this book details the life of Mary Jemison from her capture by a Shawnee raiding party when she was sixteen to her death. Larsen's highly lyrically novel begins with the scalping deaths of Jemison's family and continues with chronicling the intense turmoil Jemison faced in the aftermath. Jemison's transition into the Seneca tribe, her resulting marriages, pregnancies and decision to remain true to her new Seneca tribe when offered the choice of returning to life as a free white woman are poetically rendered. In her discussions of "The White", Larsen noted that "the significant amount of white space was meant not only to tie in the novel's title and themes for the reader on a subconscious level, but also to allow the reader time to fully digest the material of the novel and to reflect on the intense details of Jemison's story." Some reviewers have inappropriately referred to this book as "junior high" level reading. Well, gee, I read "Moby Dick", "Great Expectations" and "A Tale of Two Cities" in junior high. If this is the class of literature to which the reviewers referred, than, yes, by all means place "The White" in with this reading.

This book is a very poetic interpretation of Mary Jemison's life.As someone who teaches history to the public I understand the challenge of constructing a story out of historic documents. and I was pleased with Larsen's book.I think the author was highly successful in presenting the story of an individual who lived in early America. As a woman of color, it was gratifying to finally read a historic novel which discusses how ethnicity affected people's day-o-day lives. Larsen does a good job of presenting information in a balanced way. One reviewer said that she felt the novel was something a middle school student would read, and I agree, but that is another thing I enjoyed about it. Don't get me wrong the book is as complex and subtle as Moby Dick, but it is also very accessible in part because it is a first person account of a woman whose formal education in English was aruptly cut off. FOR TEACHERS This book is an excellent resource to use along with the actual account of Mary Jemison.

Deborah Larsen's The White assumes the voice of a 1758 girl who was stolen by a Shawnee raiding party from her home in Pennsylvania. From the brutal deaths of her white family to her involvement with her captors, this paints a graphic portrait of a young girl who survives under impossible odds.

Propelled by lyrical prose and a strong narrative voice Deborah Larsen's novel fascinates. By taking an actual event and imagining what-might-have-been, the author is able to offer a sometimes savage, sometimes beautiful picture of life in mid 18th century America. As Ms. Larsen explains in her prefatory note, a young woman around the age of sixteen was taken from her Pennsylvania home by a Shawnee raiding party and their French compadres. The year was 1758, and the girl's name is thought to be Mary Jamison. We learn this again through our fictional protagonist and narrator, Mary: "I was born a white at sea on the way to the New World...But I was taken by those whom we called Indians. Nearly speechless for a time, I was beset by terrors." Following their abduction the captives are forced to endure a torturous march during which Mary's parents are killed. Fearful and alone, Mary hopes for death, but she is selected for adoption by two young Seneca women. Later, Mary learns that she is to take the place of a brother lost to the white men, and is given the name Two-Falling-Voices. "According to custom, I stood in a brother's place, though I may just as easily have been scalped, since satisfaction and justice came either through the taking of life or by means of adoption." During her early days with the Senecas Mary remains stoically silent, remembering the Scripture she had heard read in her former home and sadly doing as she was bidden. But eventually the two sisters are able to reach her and she learns the Seneca tongue and customs. As time passes she catches the eye of Sheninjee, a young Delaware warrior who marries her. She comes to care for him, and is devastated when their first child is still born. Further heartbreak comes to her when Sheninjee is killed during a trading trip. Yet, love comes again for Mary when she meets an older warrior, Hiokatoo, who relishes telling stories of his heroic past. She describes him as "so handsome that people sometimes stared, but he was always and everywhere faithful to me - I never feared that his shadow would fall across the pallets of other women." With him she has five children, 3 girls and a boy. Throughout the years there are opportunities for Mary to return to the white world yet she chooses to remain with the Seneca for the remainder of her long life. Ms. Larsen has penned an arresting story in which she presents a heroine torn between two cultures with sympathy and understanding. - Gail Cooke