An ambitious work of fiction, in “Apalachee” Joyce Hudson imagines the life of Hinachuba Lucia, a native woman caught within the world-upending vice grip of early European colonialism (c. early 1700s) in today’s north Florida and other Atlantic South states. From the inside cover: “When the novel opens, Spanish missionaries have settled in the Apalachee homeland … ravaging the native population with disease and altering its culture with Christianity. Despite these changes, the Apalachee maintain an uneasy coexistence with the friars. Everything changes when English soldiers and their Indian allies from the colony of Carolina invade Spanish Florida.” Hinachuba Lucia would be captured by Creek Indians in this event and sold into slavery, becoming a house servant on a plantation near the quickly growing settlement of “Charles Town.” Hudson introduces several European main characters as the story unfolds, shedding light on the truth that this was anything but a zero sum era of good and evil deeds, but a “morally complex world” in which very different people are thrown together under complicated circumstances and forced to survive the best they can. And yet, in the end no one will do so more gracefully than the wise and strong Lucia … All reviews point to a lush deeply researched book, this volume itself containing historical afterwords and even a bibliography; not your average fictional fare. [Condition: Used Very Good — A one-time library book, this volume was nonetheless treated very well and is but a degree away from us listing it “Like New.”]
Condition: Used Very Good. Fiction. Joyce Rockwood Hudson. University of Georgia Press, 2000. Hardcover (First Edition), 400 pgs, 6.25 x 9.25” / 1.75 lb
