Excerpt from Beheld by TaraShea Nesbit, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Outside, nothing was amiss. His house was still directly across from Governor Bradford's. He was still at the crossroads betwixt the wide road that ran east–west, from the ocean to the meetinghouse, and the road that ran north–south. He was still in the last place he wished to be: at the center of it all, so the puritan hypocrites could place their watchful eyes upon him. These puritans kept their enemies close.

Why were they hypocrites? The reasons were numerous, but on this morning John Billington was most concerned thus: that they forbid commoners such as himself from trading with the Wampanoag Indians while they did so freely. As if the Indians were murderers, when in fact the only ones near Plymouth who had murdered were Captain Standish and his militia, the proof of which—Wituwamat's head on a stake—was erected atop the roof of the meetinghouse. In pamphlets the puritans called the Indians idle, unable to help themselves, poor farmers who left the land desolate and therefore ready for the English. But it was Squanto who had shown them how to fertilize the sandy, shallow soil with fish; it was the Wampanoag Indians who gave them seeds to grow squash, corn, and beans. It was the knowledge of the Wampanoag women, planting in their own fields, that they had, in the beginning, relied upon. All things Governor Bradford would never put in writing. A disgrace that the hypocrites called themselves godly men and lied thus to get what it was they wanted: profit. John Billington had every right to trade with them.

The birds were gone. Who or what had provoked them? Had Billington had too much ale last evening? No, two pints only, though he had hoped for more.

A lone colonist walked up the hill toward the meetinghouse. A man whose face and gait he did not recognize. Beyond him, on the water, at a distance Billington could barely see, was a ship full of passengers, passengers sold on lies about what awaited them. His own experience on the Mayflower, though ten years past, was palpable. He had been the tenth person to step off the ship. He should be considered an elder. But the leaders of Plymouth would never recognize him as such. Those like him—the former and current indentured servants, the commoners—treated him with deference. There were three hundred people in Plymouth now. Some were unfamiliar to him. But he'd been here long enough to have many familiars whom he wished were strangers.

As if Billington had conjured him with his thoughts, Governor Bradford stepped out of his house. Billington looked away, but was not quick enough. Governor Bradford tipped his hat.

The elders would never be his friends.

Ten years before, when the hypocrites' ship, the Speedwell, had sprung a leak—twice— they demanded a place on the already-crowded Mayflower. Bradford, who was then just a man with self-righteousness and an inheritance, asked John Billington to move his family's place from the center of the ship to the side, where, during a storm, the water might run.

You'd have me sleep with the gunpowder? Billington had said.

Rather than turn back to Holland, whence they came, the puritans had persisted in adding themselves to the Mayflower. Billington knew they were a people who believed in God's back parts—that God was ever present even when not visible. They believed in signs, as he did, so he spoke to them thus.

Perhaps the leaking Speedwell is a sign, Master Bradford?

William Bradford turned.

A sign you should go back to Holland. Perhaps God does not wish you to see the New World.

Profane, Bradford said, rather loudly, to his first wife, Dorothy—rest her soul—which was not for Dorothy at all, but for Billington. That was the first of many conflicts betwixt them.

Billington wondered what allies and what foes might be aboard this approaching ship.

Excerpted from Beheld by TaraShea Nesbit. Copyright © 2020 by TaraShea Nesbit. Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury USA. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.