Bound
Three young, indentured servants accompany their English lord’s son to the New York Colony in 1775, to work on the lord’s landholding on the Hudson River. The young master dies aboard ship, leaving Harry Sharpham, Alun Williams, and Caitlin Houlihan to journey up the Hudson River Valley, an area of increasing unrest. Finding the estate deserted, the three are taken in by the kindly Dutch widow, Mevrouw Taulman, whose son, Jakob, soon claims the maidservant Caitlin as his wife. Free Blacks Elisabet and her brother Isaac are also in the household, and soon Harry finds himself drawn into a forbidden romance with the resourceful and loyal Elisabet. Danger threatens them all when another son of the English lord arrives. Harry is accused of the young master’s death, and questions are raised concerning their indentures.
After a second murder occurs and Harry has a price on his head, Elisabet and Isaac’s mixed-heritage family provide protection for Harry, assisting him, along with Alun and Isaac, in escaping to join the colonial militia in New York. There the men undergo the trials and tribulations suffered by the troops during the early days of the American Revolution. Meanwhile, with the men at war and the women alone, suspicion and violence fall upon those left behind on the Taulman farm, leading to a fatal confrontation and disaster.
Emmett does a credible job in providing a readable narrative with accurate descriptions of life in the colonies just entering revolution. Her characters have realistic situations to contend with, and Emmett portrays the diversity of the colonial population, with Native Americans, Dutch, Black people, etc., all living and working together, bound by common interests until the conflict with the British ripped their lives apart.
