Once again, Geraldine Brooks takes a remarkable shard of history and brings it to vivid life. In 1665, a young man from Martha’s Vineyard became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. The narrator of Caleb’s Crossing, Bethia Mayfield, grows up in Great Harbor amid pioneers and Puritans. Restless and curious, she yearns after an education that is closed to her by her sex. As often as she can, she slips away to explore the island’s beaches and observe its native Wampanoag inhabitants. When she encounters Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, the two forge a secret friendship that draws each into the alien world of the other.

Bethia proves an emotionally irresistible guide to the wilds of Martha’s Vineyard and the intimate spaces of the human heart. Evocative and utterly absorbing, Caleb’s Crossing is a luminous tale of love and faith, magic and adventure.

Brooks is the author of the novels People of the Book, March (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and Year of Wonders and the nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence. Book signing to follow.