'Beheld' - Tara Shea Nesbit's Tale of Plymouth Colony

“Beheld is very timely for this time of year because we’re coming right up on Thanksgiving… which in our, sort of, culture is a celebration of a myth of the Pilgrims in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and that is the subject matter of this historical novel, Beheld.” The story centers around the death of Dorothy Bradford, first wife of governor William Bradford, and depicts the early life of the pilgrims when they first arrived in this new colony. Readers will notice a recurring idea that runs throughout this book is that “when something was good it was God shining a light, and when there are hard things we have to think that we are being tested.” Nesbit goes on to talk about her inspiration for this novel, the multiple viewpoints of the characters in the story (primarily Bradford’s second wife, Alice Bradford), and her five year journey in writing Beheld.