“A thorough, occasionally whimsical, and hearteningly feminist take on the life of early Puritan pioneer and pundit Anne Bradstreet. . . . Gordon’s own sensitivity as a poet renders rapturous readings of Bradstreet’s writing.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A creative merging of Anne Bradstreet’s life and art, in ways that illuminate what it was like to be a woman—and more remarkably, a woman writer—in Puritan America.”
—David D. Hall, author of Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment
“How fortunate we are to have America’s first published poet rescued from an undeserved obscurity. This lively account of New England’s female poet casts ‘the city set on a hill’ within the lyrical light of this idiosyncratic poetic imagination. Through her lines we see, perhaps for the first time, just how new New England and the New World really were.”
—Reverend Peter J. Gomes, author of The Good Life
“Mistress Bradstreet is a humane, deeply imagined story about a courageous woman who happens also to be America’s first poet. Bradstreet springs fully to life under Gordon’s pen; we see the Puritan wife’s private struggles, and we see the complex social and theological world in which she grew into her full selfhood as woman and writer. This is a beautifully written and learned book.”
—Rosanna Warren, author of Departure and Chancellor, Academy of American Poets