Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony (urspr publ 2000; utgåvan 2012)

Review by: Matt

Tough topics? Survival
John White, an artist taken to Roanoke to make maps of the area, is trying to take his family and friends to what he thinks of as paradise, Chesapeake Bay. On the way there are a number of problems, from poisoned water to a captain paid to take them to the wrong island. They end up at Roanoke. The captain allows one person to come back to with him to England, John White. When the ship gets back to England White can’t get back to his colonists with supplies. For several years White waits for his chance. When he does get back to Roanoke, the colonists aren’t there.
My favorite part is when White imagines Chesapeake Bay as paradise. My least favorite part is when the colonists become stranded.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in colonial history. I think they would like it because it has a lot of actual maps and pictures.
I would rate this book a 3 out of 5. I choose that rating because I like history but not that much. It had some spots where it got a little boring. It wasn’t that bad. It was actually kind of cool.


i lovveeeeeeddddddddddddddddddddddddd it ( )

Few history books that are well-written and documented can be called "exciting." This is an exception. No novelist ever did a cleverer job of hooking the reader into the mystery and carrying him along through the investigation to the sad and troubling, but unavoidable, conclusion. I am an incurable history buff and I must say, "This is one of the best history books I have ever read!"

This makes a great argument for the disappearance of this early colony ( )

I read this book after having written a first draft novel about the attempts made by Sir Walter Raleigh to establish a colony on the outer banks of North Carolina. The draft remains shelved, but Lee Miller's book provided informed speculation about why the "lost colony" of Roanoke disappeared and where the settlers scattered causing me to consider resuming my project. I appreciated her background information about the miserable lives of ordinary Englishmen, the Queen's treacherous advisors, and the culture of the native Americans. My raiting reflects the vaule of the information she provides. ( )

Miller's argument about what happened to the lost colony on Roanoke island is interesting and unusual. But her writing style is horrifying. Fragments aren't sentences. Small children know this. Are taught this. In school. Miller, however, doesn't seem to know this. The entire 260-page book is written like that, I suppose, to add drama. Every now and then there are paragraphs written in complete sentences, and those paragraphs are like a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, those paragraphs are rare; I had to give up about a third of a way into the book. I'd have been smacked down in school if I'd turned in anything written the way this book is written. ( )