Ghost Hawk by Susan Cooper

Leave it to Susan Cooper’s brilliance to come up with a ghost point of view to convey the tangled complexity between the settlers and the first Americans. Here is a tumultuous epic that changes the way I think about the history of the land where I live. As I read this historical fiction for 10-14 year olds, I also kept thinking how chillingly similar is our own time, to the early 1600’s when Massachusetts Bay Colony Pilgrims misused their strong convictions, to cast out and persecute Quakers and Baptists and others who wanted real religious freedom including separation of church and state. As the ghost of Little Hawk says to his lifelong English friend John Wakely, “Treasure your uncertainty. Wrong choices come out of strong convictions that will not bend.”