Product Description

As England descends into civil war, John Tradescant the Younger, gardener to King Charles I, finds his loyalties in question, his status an ever-growing danger to his family. Fearing royal defeat and determined to avoid serving the rebels, John escapes to the royalist colony of Virginia, a land bursting with fertility that stirs his passion for botany. Only the native American peoples understand the forest, and John is drawn to their way of life just as they come into fatal conflict with the colonial settlers. Torn between his loyalty to his country and family and his love for a Powhatan girl who embodies the freedom he seeks, John has to find himself before he is prepared to choose his direction in the virgin land.In this enthralling, freestanding sequel to Earthly Joys, Gregory combines a wealth of gardening knowledge with a haunting love story that spans two continents and two cultures, making Virgin Earth a tour de force of revolutionary politics and passionate characters.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139047 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 672 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780743272537
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
In the stand-alone sequel to her Earthly Joys, Gregory follows royal gardener John Tradescant the Younger back and forth across the Atlantic between colonial Virginia and war-torn England. When John first travels to Virginia to collect exotic plants in 1638, his guide is a beautiful young Indian girl named Suckahanna. After transporting his specimens to England, he plans to return and marry her, but once at home, he learns that his father has died, leaving a letter suggesting that John marry the efficient Hester Pooks. Needing someone to care for his two children by a previous marriage, as well as for the Tradescant collection of rare objects and the Ark, the family's famous garden, John weds Hester. Meanwhile, the foolish, tyrannical King Charles I is dragging England into a civil war, and John, as a trusted servant, is pulled unwillingly into his service. To avoid having to fight for a cause he does not believe in, John returns to Virginia and Suckahanna, leaving Hester and his children back in England. In Virginia he tries to start a plantation, but having no idea how to live off the land, nears death before he is rescued by the Powhatan, Suckahanna's people. Once again John must choose sides in a war, this time between the Powhatan and the English. John is torn between them, just as he is torn between the two women in each of those separate realms. This hefty epic illuminates the conflicts of the 17th century with clear prose and a believable cast of characters, and will draw in casual readers and lovers of history alike. (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Set in 17th-century England and Virginia, this saga begins as John Tradescant the Younger, Charles I's gardener, sails to the New World in search of rarities for his gardens. Not only does he find exotic plants, but he also glimpses unimagined freedom. His father's death leads John to a marriage of convenience in England. Unwilling to fight for Charles I, he returns to Virginia, where he joins the Powhatan and finds a wife. But eventually John loses his place in the tribe because of his inability to kill settlers. Determined to maintain a commitment to his English family, he goes home to a country buffeted by civil war. John strives to keep his family safe, but his gift for survival ultimately rings hollow. In fact, this novel is tepid compared with its predecessor, Earthly Joys. Readers who enjoyed that volume will want its sequel, but others may find it hard to care about a character whose loyalties shift so readily and so often.
-Kathy Piehl, Mankato State Univ., MN
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In an attempt to flee his troubles in civil war^-torn England, John Tradescant the Younger, royal gardener to the king, sails to the fledgling colony of Virginia. He enlists the help of Suckahanna, a blossoming Powhatan maiden, to guide him in the forest, where he collects native plants to take back to his famed gardens. Despite his determination to remain unaffected by her, he finds himself promising to return. Back in England, however, he ends up proposing to Hester Pooks, a pragmatic woman with a sizable dowry. Suckahanna quickly becomes little more than a memory, until political upheaval once again forces John to escape and journey back to the New World. This time, he nearly dies in the wilderness. He is rescued by Suckahanna's tribe, yet still his tribulations continue as he struggles to determine where his loyalties lie. Gregory's fascinating account of one man's life in two different worlds displays a comprehensive and impressive knowledge of botany, early American colonization, and seventeenth-century royalist England. Deborah Rysso

Customer Reviews

This book cannot be praised enough
Virgin Earth, the sequel to the simply wonderful Earthly Joys, is nothing less than amazing. It tells the story of John Tradescant, Jr, a man haunted by the fame of his famous gardener father, a man who just lost his wife to the plague, and who has left his two little children to go plant hunting in Virginia. The book goes back and forth between Virginia and England, painting vivid pictures of England during its Civil War, and also of America during its savage beginnings. The lives of King Charles, Cromwell, the natives and settlers in Virginia, as well as John himself all intertwine, making this book one of the most elegant and compelling historical novels I have ever read!

The last new world
In Virgin earth Phillippa Gregory finishes the story of the Tradescant's a family of gardeners and explorers who searched the world for rare and beautiful things and new plants that would thrive in England. The first book is Earthly Joys about John Tradescant the elder and this book is about his son.

Where John the elder was dutiful to the extreme, John the younger questions his worlds. The book opens with him on a ship to Virginia, trying to escape the grief that the death of his wife caused. In the new world he finds a young Indian girl to help him gather plants and becomes friends with and slightly infatuated though she is half his age. When he leaves Virginia he promises he will return and marry her, but when he returns home he finds that his father has died and left in their house a woman who he thought his son should marry and who would raise his children.

And so John is caught between two worlds. There is England his home, which is safe and predictable, and there is the new world, which awakened a life inside of him. But both are the point of upheaval, Virginia by the colonists who will not coexist with the natives, and England by the reformation. This conflict goes through the novel, as does another with similar themes. There is civil war in England. The king is executed and an elected government is in place. The people of England realize that the king is not divined, nor does he rule by divine right. He can be overthrown, even invited back.

This book exposes two profound human transformations in history. The change from rule of divine right to the rule of consent of the governed, and the transformation of the frontier of the earth into just another colony. The virgin earth of the title is literally the land and the mindset of the English people-and after this book it is virgin no more.

This is by far one of Philippa Gregory's best books. She does much better when writing about more normal people (as apposed to royalty) and normal, if somewhat extraordinary, lives. The book is believable and enthralling and truly expresses John's feeling that he is on the edge of the last new world (both real and political) that there will ever be.

Four point five stars.

Superb Author
I am a great fan of author Philippa Gregory, and she did not disappoint me in VIRGIN EARTH.

I had not realized that this novel is, in fact, a sequel; certainly, the story and the characters stand alone.

Though Gregory began her writing career in the 20th century and continues now, into the 21st, I am convinced that she somehow is living in England, c. 1600, so thoroughly is she steeped in the rhythms of that time.

Her hero here, John Tradescant, is a man of conflicted loyalties, loving England but excited by its American colony of Virginia, serving King Charles I as his gardener but not desiring to be his soldier, passionate about a Native American squaw in the Virginia colony while blessed with a wonderful wife at home in England.

Those were difficult times in which Gregory places this tale, and the great proof of her success as a storyteller is how engaged the reader becomes in her fictional characters, all the while knowing the ultimate outcome the conflict on which it hinges; to wit, Cromwell's Roundhead Revolution.

The part of the novel that deals with the earliest settlement of Virginia is fascinating. Gregory makes it clear that the United States is a country that was founded on turmoil, strife and cruelty. The suffering she describes, of both slaves and Native Americans, as well as the deathly struggles of the colonists, all are appalling--and these are issues that rarely are examined in full.

Philippa Gregory remains one of the finest authors in the English language. Her fans will be well-pleased by VIRGIN EARTH.