To the Bone
Ellis, a teenage indentured servant living in the Virginia settlement called Jamestown by its English colonizers, narrates this story set in the “Starving Time.” Over the winter of 1609-1610, all but 60 of the approximately 500 Jamestown settlers died.
Ellis’s father has gone ahead to the colonies, hoping to start a new life and to be joined by his family (Ellis and her then-pregnant mother). After her mother and baby sister die, Ellis follows him, only to find herself working for an abusive man and his bedridden wife. She learns that her father has probably gone to a different settlement, but communications are practically nonexistent and she has no way to find out if he’s still alive.
As supply ships fail to arrive and a drought intensifies, rations are cut. Relations with the Indigenous population, always uneasy, worsen. Ellis is bolstered by her friendship with two fellow servants: a boy named Rowan, and a girl, Jane, with whom Ellis is falling in love. Ellis is naïve and uneducated, yet she sees the situation more clearly than do her “betters.” She is first bewildered and then horrified by the way the colonizers treat the Indigenous people. She doesn’t understand why the colonizers attempt to live the way they did in England, in this vastly different world.
While Ellis and Rowan are fictional, archaeologists at Jamestown have found the remains of a 14-year-old girl—whom they nicknamed “Jane”—whose bones show signs that she was cannibalized.
This grim tale comes with the warning that it “includes depictions of domestic abuse, cannibalism, and self-harm.” For young adult readers able to navigate those waters, it will be a gripping and unforgettable read. An Author’s Note provides information about the Starving Time and the changes made to history in the text.
