Searching for Virginia Dare: A Fool's Errand

by Marjorie Hudson

Book Overview

The disappearance of the infant Virginia Dare, the first English child born on American soil, has dogged historians for more than four centuries. All we know is that she was born, baptized, and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1928556345
• ISBN13: 9781928556343
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Coastal Carolina Press
• Length: 181 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

New Way of Telling

The idea that fiction and history can be melded isn't new, but the way that Marjorie Hudson does it is fresh. Searching for Virginia Dare is daring, reflective, and most of all, fun to read.

The ultimate year-round beach read

This book is a real treat. It takes one of the great legends of American history--the Lost Colony--weaves it into the author's memoir-like reflections of her own life and the "missing people" in it, then folds in the author's fictional speculations, beautifully written, about the fate of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World, who was one of the colonists who disappeared from Roanoke Island in the 17th century. These fictional passages are beautifully written. The book is hard to categorize, with its mix of fiction, nonfiction narrative, and memoir, but that shouldn't stop you from grabbing a copy and reading it over & over.

A New Kind of Story

This book is a treasure. Marjorie Hudson has brilliantly woven history, essay, life and meticulous reporting into a lyrical narrative unlike any I've ever read. We are caught up in not just the mystery of Virginia Dare - which is enough to sustain any work - but in the broader mysteries that Hudson brings to tea - families, the search for truth and the drive to leave behind some evidence that we were here.

Brilliant and Eccentric

This genre-busting work combines history, historical fiction and the author's personal odyssey in search of her own family roots. For the reader, it's a fascinating, rewarding journey to take with her, hardly a fool's errand. Ms. Hudson displays a stunning mastery of different voices not often found in first novels. She has created a seamless, provocative and often quirky mosaic that brushes the dust off one of America's most enduring stories and breathes fresh life into a piece of history that continues to capture our imagination.

I Love This Book

Searching For Virginia Dare: A Fool's Errand, is unique in its combination of historical research, fictional speculation, memoir, and road trip. The author embarks on a quest for lost stories--she combs through archives, explores the back roads and towns of North Carolina, asks questions of everyone she meets, ponders her own losses and stories, imagines stories that might have been. In doing so, she creates a fascinating and beautifully written story of her own.