Fascinating read about when Merrimack valley was on the American frontier and Hannah Duston was fierce. She's mostly been lost to history but shouldn't have been.

I'm not entirely sure why people have given this book 5 stars. The author uses outdated language and phrases that denigrate Indigenous people, children, and women. He uses the wrong (modern) street names for places in Boston that weren't labeled that way until the late 1800s/1900s. He meanders around the timeline which helps to confuse the story. He obviously wants the English colonists to be portrayed in the best light possible.
Long story short, I would avoid this book if you are looking to read about captivity stories of Massachusetts during the 1600s.

Informative and incredibly readable - sometimes too much so, to be honest; the author will confidently state things that probably aren’t in the historical record and then a few paragraphs later remember that he’s writing nonfiction and hedge with “undoubtedly,” “likely,” etc. Additionally I am somewhat squeamish about a work of history written so recently which does not even try to present the Native American side of things. While I recognize that Atkinson is writing from the perspective of the settlers, Duston’s captors are described as Indians, savages, and squaws. Not occasionally, either - those are the words used to describe them throughout the narrative.

I really enjoyed this book about a local heroine. It's well researched but doesn't mindlessly reproduce the biases of the source material. Our views on Native Americans has changed greatly in the more than 300 years since Hannah was taken captive, and Atkinson tells the story with that in mind. He looks at both sides, showing the hardships and the cruelties of both the Native Americans and the Europeans. His notes are well worth reading alongside the main text, enriching the story further.

For all of that, this is not a dry, academic book. It's an enjoyable narrative about people ordinary, famous, and infamous. Those from the Merrimack Valley will visit familiar places and get to know people remembered only locally. Others will enjoy getting to know what frontier life was like in colonial days: how hard it was to survive, how easy it was to lose everything, and how a lack of understanding and compassion greatly affected the growth of our nation.