Every colony begins with a count.
Richard Taverner has spent his life measuring ale, settling debts, and knowing when a man’s story does not match the ledger. When Sir Walter Raleigh offers him land in Virginia, Richard is hired to keep the stores and send home a true account of England’s new colony.
In 1587, he sails with Governor John White, Eleanor Dare, Manteo of Croatoan, and more than a hundred men, women, and children bound for Chesapeake Bay. Their ships leave them at Roanoke Island instead.
The settlement waiting there is empty. The previous English garrison has vanished. Its fort has been dismantled, its houses stripped, and bones lie among the vines. The colonists are put ashore anyway.
Virginia Dare is born. White sails for England to seek relief. Richard enters 115 living souls in his ledger and begins dividing provisions meant for another place and a much shorter wait. From that day, the count moves in one direction.
The soil will not feed them. The wells bring sickness and visions. Food spoils. Storms scatter boats. Every journey beyond the palisade risks another empty place at supper. The peoples along the coast remember what earlier Englishmen burned and whom they killed, while fear inside the walls turns neighbors against one another and makes every accident look like betrayal.
To Eleanor, the child born at Roanoke is proof the colony must endure. To Manteo, each English demand carries a cost his own people may be forced to pay. Richard must choose who eats, which risks the colony can afford, what truths can be spoken, and how many lives may be spent trying to save the rest.
He keeps one ledger for the colony and another for what he believes happened. As hunger, fever, and grief begin to corrupt the witness, the books divide. One records a settlement struggling to survive. The other records how it disappears.
In THE ACCURSED, William Havelock turns the mystery of the Lost Colony into a brutal historical survival epic, told by the man whose ledger may be the only thing Roanoke leaves behind.
One hundred and fifteen souls went ashore.
Every loss leaves fewer hands to save the rest.
Someone must survive to close the book.
Genre: Historical
Richard Taverner has spent his life measuring ale, settling debts, and knowing when a man’s story does not match the ledger. When Sir Walter Raleigh offers him land in Virginia, Richard is hired to keep the stores and send home a true account of England’s new colony.
In 1587, he sails with Governor John White, Eleanor Dare, Manteo of Croatoan, and more than a hundred men, women, and children bound for Chesapeake Bay. Their ships leave them at Roanoke Island instead.
The settlement waiting there is empty. The previous English garrison has vanished. Its fort has been dismantled, its houses stripped, and bones lie among the vines. The colonists are put ashore anyway.
Virginia Dare is born. White sails for England to seek relief. Richard enters 115 living souls in his ledger and begins dividing provisions meant for another place and a much shorter wait. From that day, the count moves in one direction.
The soil will not feed them. The wells bring sickness and visions. Food spoils. Storms scatter boats. Every journey beyond the palisade risks another empty place at supper. The peoples along the coast remember what earlier Englishmen burned and whom they killed, while fear inside the walls turns neighbors against one another and makes every accident look like betrayal.
To Eleanor, the child born at Roanoke is proof the colony must endure. To Manteo, each English demand carries a cost his own people may be forced to pay. Richard must choose who eats, which risks the colony can afford, what truths can be spoken, and how many lives may be spent trying to save the rest.
He keeps one ledger for the colony and another for what he believes happened. As hunger, fever, and grief begin to corrupt the witness, the books divide. One records a settlement struggling to survive. The other records how it disappears.
In THE ACCURSED, William Havelock turns the mystery of the Lost Colony into a brutal historical survival epic, told by the man whose ledger may be the only thing Roanoke leaves behind.
One hundred and fifteen souls went ashore.
Every loss leaves fewer hands to save the rest.
Someone must survive to close the book.
Genre: Historical