opens another chapter in the compelling saga of the Winslow family. Pre-Revolutionary America was stirring the flames of freedom and the Great Awakening under Jonathan Edwards was renewing a nation's spiritual values. Adam Winslow, a man of the soil, has different interests and values from his father and grandfather. But their patriotism and spiritual fervor have left their imprint on his personality. And far off in England a young beggar girl is about to be given the chance of a new life. Molly Burns has lived under the constant terror of her drunken, abusive father, but rescue comes to her doorstep in the person of Adam Winslow. He promises to bring her safely to America on the condition that she become an indentured servant for ten years. Escape from her wretched circumstances and the distant glimmer of freedom in a new land help to make her decision.
Set against First Great Awakening in Colonial America, 1730–1745 and Indentured Servitude in Colonial America, the story extends the Winslow genealogy through a specific phase of American or global history, using Christian conversion, family inheritance and romantic loyalty as its principal interpretive framework.
