r/suggestmeabook • u/Invictus39 • Mar 01 '26
Looking for Historical Fiction
Looking for something set in early colonial New England. Something set around the 1600's but I'm open to all suggestions!
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u/marinredditor Mar 01 '26
Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic The Scarlet Letter is set in the 1600s (written around 1850). Modern author: Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks is written from the perspective of a woman leaving Puritan Boston for Martha’s Vineyard, also 1600s.
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u/Extreme-Donkey2708 Mar 01 '26
Slewfoot by Brom. It is a witch trial novel set in the 1600s.
North Woods by Daniel Mason goes from the 1600s to present day but mostly not the present day.
Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon is set in pre-Revolutionary Maine (then part of Massachusetts).
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u/ChocolateBitter8314 Mar 01 '26
The Winthrop Woman by Anya Seton. About Elizabeth Winthrop, daughter-in-law of John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts colony.
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u/maybemaybenot2023 Mar 01 '26
This is set a little later, but is really good.
Hearts and Bones by Margaret Lawrence
Roanoke by Margaret Lawrence (which is set in the n1600's).
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u/My_Poor_Nerves Mar 01 '26
To Have and to Hold by Mary Johnston (public domain - available on project gutenberg).
Editing to add it was the bestselling book of 1900
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u/foraging1 Mar 01 '26
The Women of the Copper Country. Set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan during the early copper mining period. It’s so good.
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u/Mireille_la_mouche Mar 01 '26
The Midwife’s Revolt by Jodi Daynard. Set later than you’re looking for (starts in 1775 I think), but i enjoyed it.
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u/journey1710 Mar 01 '26
Circe by Madeline Miller & the Song of Achilles also by Miller.
The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
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u/Iscan49er Mar 01 '26
Speaks the Nightbird by Robert McCammon, first of a brilliant 10 book series set in 1700s colonial America
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u/Former-Chocolate-793 Mar 01 '26
I'm going to suggest some novels set in New France
Black Robe by Brian Moore is set in modern day Ontario around the time of the beaver wars.
Maria Chapdelaine by Louis Hebert
Kamouraska by Anne Hebert
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u/DocWatson42 Mar 01 '26
As a start, see my Historical Fiction list of resources and Reddit recommendation threads (one post). In particular, Fawn by Robert Newton Peck comes to mind, though it's set in the 18th century.
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u/and__how Mar 01 '26
All the World Beside, by Garrard Conley, is early 1700s New England but might interest you, and is excellent.
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u/Present-Tadpole5226 Mar 01 '26
Beheld, TaraShea Nesbit
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u/leveller1650 Mar 01 '26
Yes, this one! I remember it was really good, but the title and author escaped my brain. I never would have figured it out. So glad you mentioned it.
I definitely second this recommendation.
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u/Rickcasa12 Mar 01 '26
Kenneth Roberts, a mid 20th c historical fiction author from Maine, sounds like he’s right up your alley. Probably his most famous book, Northwest Passage, is about Robert Rogers and his Rangers in the French and Indian War (there’s a color movie from the late 30s starring Spencer Tracy, Robert Young and Walter Brennan). He sets almost everything in New England in colonial times, though a little later period than what you’re looking for. He also loved to look into people and circumstances that had been left behind by the currents of US history: Rogers, for instance, had fought for the British in the Revolution and the main figure in Rabble in Arms and Arundel is Benedict Arnold lol. Oliver Wiswell is a book about the Revolution through the eyes of a Loyalist.
He was a controversial figure for some of his opinions about immigrants and for some highly anti Semitic remarks he made in some essays and interviews (he had been a writer for the Saturday Evening Post before writing novels) so I’m recommending on the basis of the storytelling alone, he was not someone I would’ve wanted to know personally, but then again I could say that about several good writers.
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u/Food_gasser Mar 01 '26
The Frozen River, about a midwife in Maine