Flight of the Sparrow: A Novel of Early America

by Amy Belding Brown, Heather Henderson (Narrator)

She suspects that she has changed too much to ever fit easily into English society again. The wilderness has now become her home. She can interpret the cries of birds. She has seen vistas that have stolen away her breath. She has learned to live in a new, free way…

Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1676. Even before Mary Rowlandson was captured by Indians on a winter day of violence and terror, she sometimes found herself in conflict with her rigid Puritan community. Now, her home destroyed, her children lost to her, she has been sold into the service of a powerful woman tribal leader and made a pawn in the ongoing bloody struggle between English settlers and native people. Battling cold, hunger, and exhaustion, Mary witnesses harrowing brutality but also unexpected kindness. To her confused surprise, she is drawn to her captors' open and straightforward way of life - a feeling further complicated by her attraction to a generous, protective English-speaking native known as James Printer. All her life, Mary has been taught to fear God, submit to her husband, and abhor Indians. Now, having lived on the other side of the forest, she begins to question the edicts that have guided her, torn between the life she knew and the wisdom the natives have shown her.

Based on the compelling true narrative of Mary Rowlandson, Flight of the Sparrow is an evocative tale that transports the listener to a little-known time in early America and explores the real meanings of freedom, faith, and acceptance.

Audible Audio

Published July 1, 2014

About the author

Amy Belding Brown is the bestselling USA Today author of EMILY'S HOUSE, FLIGHT OF THE SPARROW and MR. EMERSON’S WIFE. A Vermonter and history nerd, she was infused at an early age with a New England outlook and values. She loves stone walls, sugar maples and old cemeteries, and her favorite hobby is nature photography. She’s never happier than when she’s reading a stack of 19th century letters or exploring old church records. She has taught composition and creative writing to college students and life-story writing to senior citizens, made quilts, raised four children, been a tour guide at Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House Museum in Concord, Massachusetts, taught pre-school, made cloth dolls, created wall hangings on a hand loom, baked homemade bread, written poetry, and painted New England landscapes. Oh, and she’s also been a pastor’s wife for 43 years.. A graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, she received her MFA from Vermont College and now lives in rural Vermont with her husband, a UCC minister and spiritual director.