Deceptions: A Jamestown Novel

Written by Marilyn J. Clay
Review by Susan Zabolotny

Catherine Parke is the central character in Ms. Clay’s latest historical novel. Catherine does not intend to deceive anyone, but only wishes to escape an arranged marriage and travel to the New World to reunite with her brother, Adam, her father, and her dearest friend from childhood, Noah Colton. But in her effort to succeed, she is forced to take part in many deceptions along the way.

This story begins in London in 1617 and ends two years later in Jamestown, Virginia. Through a series of pretty remarkable happenstances she succeeds in getting to the New World. Many of her dreams of a new beginning are shattered when she arrives in Jamestown to find her father has died and Noah has married another. When Noah begins to act on his old feelings for Catherine, she marries a man she does not love in order to stop herself from giving in to Noah’s advances. When her lifelong dream to marry Noah becomes reality, she soon learns that he is not the man she has known and loved since childhood. In spite of the mores and standards of colonial life, she eventually breaks free and finds her place in the new world. I wasn’t wild about this book, but there are many readers of the romance genre who will love it.