Convinced of her notion that "each story is holy/to someone,"
Schott versifies a fascinating episode in colonial American history
for this narrative sequence: an early settler of present-day New
Jersey with the same first name as the poet is nearly killed, then
is saved, by the local Lenape Indians. This slight fourth
collection by Schott never overreaches, and it wears its historical
learning lightly - the Indian words and customs are smoothly
integrated into these short-lined poems with their rough rhymes and
simple rhythms. Mostly in the voice of her 17th-century namesake,
Scott follows her character from childhood as the daughter of a
pious Protestant dissenter in England to her eventual flight to
Holland, where she meets her first husband and poses for a "graven
image" by a female Dutch artist. After a rough passage to America,
Penelope's husband is murdered by Indians, and she herself is
nearly eviscerated and partly scalped. Rescued by a sympathetic
native, and stitched up by the Indians, Penelope rejoins the Dutch
settlers and marries again, only to convince her new husband that
they should take their large family - she bears ten children - to
live farther from the city and closer to her Indian friends.
Breeding her own tribe, Penelope Stout abandons her faith and seems
to go native in response to the generosity of the locals, who warn
her family of impending strife. Schott's little poems, for the most
part, tell the tale plain, and the author provides a welcome
appendix of facts and sources. Some editorial intrusions - a poem,
for example, in which Schott bonds with her colonial "sister" - mar
an otherwise modest exercise. (Kirkus Reviews)
Narrates the life of a woman shipwrecked in the 1640s on the shores
of modern-day New Jersey, axed in the belly, half-scalped and left
for dead by the Lenape Indians, then nursed back to health by them
and taken into the tribe. And that's only the beginning. Penelope
Scambly Schott has carefully researched the facts and woven them
into a poetic page-turner.
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