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.