Appendix helps ‘New Day’ readers

A NEW DAY DAWNING, by Philip B. Turner, New Ireland Press, 174 pages, $14 U.S., $14.95 Canadian.

The latest historical novel by Philip Turner, a Caribou author who has explored various aspects of the settlement of Aroostook County in his previous books, is about Loyalists who fled from the United States to maritime Canada after the Revolutionary War.

Turner chooses Mary Blake Craig Orser, a distant relative, as the leading lady in what is essentially a genealogical story starring Turner’s ancestors who settled in western New Brunswick.

“I have added some fictitious people, whom I tried to make come alive, rather than present a list of cardboard people walking in their sleep,” Turner explains in an introduction. “Most of the events are true, with some embellishment.”

In the spring of 1787, 15-year-old Mary Blake, home alone in the riverfront log cabin she shared with her father at Oromocto, New Brunswick, was kidnapped by two young Abenaki braves. They took her back to their tribe, with whom she lived for a time before being set free to search for her father at what is now Saint John, New Brunswick.

From there the story traces Mary’s life until she becomes the matriarch of Hartland, New Brunswick, where she died on her 84th birthday, May 7, 1856. Today, her portrait hangs in the Hartland Town Hall in remembrance of her early prominence in the community.

In a twist of fate stranger than fiction, Mary’s first husband, James Craig, is also kidnapped by Indians — apparently an occupational hazard amongst Turner’s ancestry — and spirited away to upper Canada. Disconsolate when her husband doesn’t return from a foray upriver, and saddled with managing her young brood and the family farm on her own, Mary marries Will Orser, her husband’s brother-in-law, who previously had lost his beloved wife.

Several years later, however, Craig makes his way back home from upper Canada, only to learn that his wife has happily remarried and the Craig-Orser families have melded into one harmonious clan. Gallant to the core, he decides to move on without making contact with Mary, passing up a golden opportunity to suggest to her that the reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated. But he does seek out his oldest son to disclose his existence, pledging the son to lifelong secrecy.

In most genealogical tales it is difficult to keep track of the players without a score card, and this one is no different. But Turner thoughtfully provides help in the form of an appendix should readers lose their bearings as the author’s forebears migrate gradually up the St. John River over the decades.