A Stolen Life (1999) by Jane Louise Curry

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

A Stolen Life (1999)

by Jane Louise Curry

Shirley Plantation, Virginia

Virginia: 5/17

    The Shirley Plantation where A Stolen Life- which is a Newberry Prize winning Children's book, is set at the southern edge of an arc of territory that encompasses all of the books from Delaware, Maryland and Washington DC, and all but six of the titles from Virginia.  There's a clear dividing line between this territory, which is basically the watershed of the Chesapeake Bay, and the rest of the area of Chapter 4:  western Virginia and all of North and South Carolina.  The defining characteristics of these books is their proximity to water and status as "old" parts of the United States, with a history that reaches back to the colonial era.  

    That brings us to A Stolen Life, about a young girl who is kidnapped (or "spirited" in the quasi-whimsical language of the time) away from her home in coastal Scotland and sold as an indentured servant in still-wild colonial Virginia.   If I have my history correct, the father of the protagonist is a rebellious Jacobite, and the reason for her kidnapping is tied up in her families decision to have her dress as a boy to avoid the wrath of the English king (for complicated reasons).  Thus, the spiriters take her for a boy when they grab her off the Scottish coast.

    A Stolen Life is a children's book, so her adventures in the new world, which include being kidnapped by Cherokees are decidedly PG but I enjoyed the rare depiction of life in colonial era Virginia.