Rivers parting: A novel

by Shirley Barker

Here in Nottingham in the year 1628, John loves the orphan Joan, and does not wait for any man to say a prayer over their love . . . and promises that she shall follow him to the New World. Here is New Hampshire in America . . . where men loyal to the king and his church build a happy land that honors both the spirit and the flesh, till the godly men of Massachusetts come with laws to still their neighbors' laughter . . . where a strange little girl named Nan boasts that her mother was the first harlot in Portsmouth . . . and where Joan bears John a son and calls him Will. Here is London, when young Will returns to his father's England in the year of the plague . . . where a girl in a scarlet dress plays her lute and sings to keep her city gay, while the street-voices cry "Bring out your dead."

311 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1950