Book Review

Chesapeake by James A. Michener

Michener is famous for his sweeping novels that take a single location and follows the families that make their lives in an area through generations. I decided to tackle the book, because I wanted a better understanding of this part of the country we are now in. Philadelphia is an east coast, mid-Atlantic city, but it looks to the south as much as it looks to the north. Delaware and Maryland are close by, the Chesapeake and the factors that have shaped it were also at play in Philadelphia. You feel those forces here in a way you really don’t in New York, and I wanted to learn more about them.

After reading this book my first thought was “wow, it’s a miracle this place is not more screwed up.”

Chesapeake follows a section of Maryland beach, near Virginia, from the peaceful Indians that inhabit it, through the English that first “colonize” the land for England (the Steed Family), the Quakers who come to find religious freedom (the Paxmores) and  the lower class English looking to escape a hopeless fate (the Turlocks). Towards the latter half of the book, the final main family to complete the cast is introduced, the Cater family, descended from freed slaves.

There were two main themes that ran throughout the story. I was struck by the cruelty and inhumanity suffered by the Native Americans and the Cater family. I was also struck by how ill-prepared the colonists were; it was a miracle they survived at all.

On the first point, slavery, as a subject, has always been a footnote to a larger story in my reading history. I’m ashamed to admit that other than Oroonoko by A. Behn , I’m not sure I’ve read a full length work where slavery was the main subject. This will be rectified. The descriptions of the Cater family’s entrance to the novel, from being kidnapped in Africa and forcibly marched, chained in a ship and subsequent events (I don’t want to ruin the plot) almost made me throw up. It’s one thing to learn the route facts of the trade in history class; it’s another thing to imagine the experience for yourself. I won’t ruin the plot, but certainly reading the events through a perspective of a family carries a much bigger impact. I was deeply moved.

Equally projectile-vomit inducing is the fate of the peaceful Indians who were the original inhabitants. The only word to describe their fate is genocide. Here Michener points out the effects of English culture vs. Spanish culture. The English colonizers would hold out for white women from England to ship over to get married. It was not considered acceptable for Spanish women to be shipped to the new world, so the Spanish colonizers often took Indians as wives.  Make no mistake, the Native Americans did not fare well no matter who they met, but this difference carries some implications for how a culture develops.

Michener isn’t just about plot and character building, he’s also about facts. From ship building to tobacco growing, he’s going to teach you about the subjects his character’s lives depend on. It’s here where I was surprised at just how little the colonists knew in general made. They even needed instructions shipped from England on how to get salt from sea-water in mass. That they managed to survive at all has much more to do with luck then anything.

In addition to reading more about slavery, I’ll also be reading more about the Quakers. But it’s not until the end of the book that you realize that this book is really about one major character all along – the environment.  “Few places on earth compared in physical beauty and spiritual ease with the Chesapeake,” he writes. I would agree (though there are some who feel mountains trump all). The land that has sustained countless generations of Indians is irrevocably ruined in a mere 300 years or so. Filling in the swamp with concrete takes away the birds feeding grounds. (The first person perspective of the birds suddenly losing their feeding grounds is heartbreaking.) Everyone throwing their food garbage into their garbage disposal creates sewage slime that helps decimate the shell fish when a large storm comes along. It takes years to recover and never fully does. Farming practices ruin the soil. It’s almost as if Michener hooked you along with his characters all along to build up to one big smack upside the head to wake his readers from the “supine acceptance of despoliation”. You can almost feel the anger from the author in these last chapters.

Michener is long on word count but it’s worth it for the gems. Regarding the early colonies, some early settlers choose Maryland “because Maryland was almost as deplorable as Massachusetts” (that made me laugh). One heroine’s philosophy is “Ugly or not, I’ll be the best person I can” (a completely loveable sentiment). At its best the novel highlights the forces that shaped East Coast American a “challenge of different ideas expressed in different languages by men reared in different traditions.” At a bare minimum, hey it’s got pirates. Recommended.