American Passage

“In six chapters covering a century, Grandjean explains the transformation of England’s holdings from a handful of isolated settlements to a connected array of towns by tracing the movement of letters and oral messages over land and water. By doing so, she demonstrates convincingly that information exchange was a crucial element for English expansion. American Passage makes a significant contribution to our understanding of 17th-century New England.”—Richard D. Brown, co-author of Taming Lust: Crimes against Nature in the Early Republic

“An impressive achievement. Grandjean offers new insights into the history of early New England, when the English presence was little more than a few scattered, disconnected, and vulnerable outposts at a great distance from England itself. Carefully researched, elegantly crafted, and clearly written, American Passage captures the primitiveness, contingency, porousness, and fluidity of English settlement in an environment where their communications were heavily reliant on Native Americans.”—Konstantin Dierks, author of In My Power: Letter Writing and Communications in Early America