It’s 1656.
A former soldier in Oliver Cromwell’s Army of the Saints makes his way to London.
Rhisiart Dafydd is, as his name suggests, of Welsh extraction. He’s coming to
London at the request of his former commanding officer, Colonel John Powel, who
wants him to undertake an assignment – in America.
Reports
have filtered back to Powel that a Welsh Calvinist settlement in the forest
wilderness has slipped into heresy, but of what kind isn’t known. Or even of
the reports are true. Why should this even matter in Cromwellian England?
Because Powel sees the end of the regime coming; it has not brought the
expected heaven on earth, and the settlement in America was supposed be
something better, something more permanent.
Religion in
the 1650s was taken far more seriously. After all, it played a huge role in the
civil war
that ended in the beheading of a king. And the wilderness settlement is named
New Jerusalem.
Daffyd
sails to America, only to be the sole survivor (with a cat) of a shipwreck
during a storm right off the coast. He’s cared for by a Native American tribe,
who eventually help him reach an English settlement. The tribe also provides
him with a map to what is likely New Jerusalem. And Daffyd will follow the map,
carrying with him his own doubts of faith, his horrific experiences with Cromwell’s
army in Ireland, and what he saw happen at the Battle
of Naseby (1645), the last major battle of the civil war. What he
originally believed has been undermined by these events; he stil has faith but
it is different than what he carried with him into war.
Dark
Territory by Jerry Hunter was
originally published in Welsh and translated into English by Patrick Ford. Hunter
is an American who moved to Wales, where he is currently a professor in the
School of Welsh and deputy vice chancellor of Bangor University. Almost all of
his previously published works are in Welsh, which is something to regret,
based on Dark Territory.
Hunter has
written a study of the use of prophecy as propaganda during the Tudor period, a
history of the American Civil War based on Welsh accounts and letters on both
sides of the conflict, and a biography of the Welsh-American abolitionist
Robert Everett. He’s written a children’s book and four adult novels, including
Dark Territory. He received a B.A. degree
from the University of Cincinnati, a Master of Philosophy degree from the
University of Aberystwyth, and a Ph.D. degree from Harvard.
 |
| Jerry Hunter |
Dark Territory doesn’t follow a standard
chronological narrative. It begins by alternating Daffyd’s meeting in London
with Powel and Daffyd trying to survive the shipwreck in America. It then moves
to Daffyd’s life, and how he came to be a soldier in Cromwell’s Army. And then
Hunter tells the story of Daffyd in America and New Jerusalem. What this
weaving and interweaving of different periods of time produces is an account of
a life where past continues to shape present and future.
It’s one
of the best historical novels I’ve read. Period. Hunter places you right in the
middle of what’s happening to Daffyd. You see the massacres in Ireland. You
experience the “little plague” in 1647. You sail to America on a creaking ship
and you struggle to survive its breaking up on rocks. And you walk with Daffyd
into the wilderness to find New Jerusalem.
And you
come away with an understanding of the religious turmoil of the 1640s and
1650s, how that played out in both England and America, and how it shaped the
life of a man.
Top illustration: Battle
of Naseby, hand-colored copper engraving by Dupuis after Parrocel, 1727.
