Mary and her three living children were among those marched out of town and then north. In February 1675, a marauding band of natives attacked Lancaster in what is now western Massachusetts, burning houses and barns while killing some residents and kidnapping others. Like the many captivity narratives that would follow, this one sets a pattern that emphasizes faith in God in the face of unspeakable savagery.Īmy Belding Brown’s novel, Flight of the Sparrow, without benefit of puritanical oversight, reimagines Mary Rowlandson’s ordeal as the captive might actually have experienced it. Apparently, Mary Rowlandson gave a draft of her recollections to Increase Mather, who edited it extensively and added puritanical scriptures and life lessons. Scholars consider this account the prototype of the many such “captivity narratives” that followed, first-hand reminiscences of men and women (mostly women) abducted by “savages” in America, then later returned to “civilization.” That particular book, however, seems to have been a somewhat imaginative reconstruction of what really happened. Mary Rowlandson, in 1682, published a narrative longwindedly titled The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed, Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs.
Mary Rowlandson’s 1682 published narrative of her abduction by “savages.”
Flight of The Sparrow, Amy Belding Brown’s fresh and non-puritanical retelling of Mrs.
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