Argall

Name: Argall
Rating: 4.2 (20 reviews)

by William T. Vollmann Book 3 in the Seven Dreams series.

Amazon

3.7(20)

Virginia, 1607–1617. English colonists establish Jamestown within the territory of the Powhatan paramount chiefdom and quickly become dependent on the communities they also intend to dominate. John Smith’s encounters with Pocahontas are repeatedly reshaped into legend, while hunger, disease and retaliatory violence expose the colony’s weakness and the coercive assumptions beneath its claims to possession.

Samuel Argall’s capture of Pocahontas in 1613 leads to her conversion, marriage to John Rolfe and journey to England, where she is displayed as evidence that colonisation can be presented as Christian improvement. Vollmann’s elaborate imitation of early modern language repeatedly collides with blunt accounts of exploitation and betrayal. By dismantling the romantic story of Pocahontas and Smith, the novel presents Jamestown’s survival as the beginning of dispossession rather than a heroic national origin.