Beheld - AKA Murder, Lesbians, and Guilt in a Puritan Colony

"If I am going to my grave, I'm going to it honestly." In New Plymouth colony, 1630, a man wants the land that is promised him. A woman lives the life that was promised to her dearest friend. A new arrival wants to start a free life. Until a murder rocks their God-fearing lives and their personal stories threaten the stability of the entire colony. Alice Bradford, as the pious, welcoming wife of Governor William Bradford, is meant to smooth things over with the colony's pariah family via Eleanor Billington. Eleanor has lost her eldest son, and her husband continually demands the land that Governor Bradford and Myles Standish (yes, the real Myles Standish) deny him - land that should have been their son's. John Billington has never been beloved by the colony, despite secreting help to his neighbors and working his way through years of indentured servitude to the Bradfords themselves. When the land the Billingtons believe should be theirs is sold to a lone new arrival, all of these lives intertwine, overlooked by the memory of Dorothy Bradford, the late wife of the Governor. Told in language that is suitable to the time but accessible to the modern reader, this story of the Plymouth colony could have been set in any time period, any country, any culture. The characters and the story are purely human. One could pick up a newspaper and easily believe to find this story as a front-page news article. Humans, when they are not able to hold what they believe to be theirs, become strange creatures. 4/5 pickles.