Friday, February 24, 2017

Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony

Lee Miller's title pretty much says it all. Miller sets out to understand how an entire colony could have disappeared, the questions that his intrigued generations of historians, archaeologists, and others.

Does she solve the mystery? I actually have no idea. I tried so hard to finish this book. I am deeply interested in history and have dragged my husband hither-and-yon to dozens of sites of questionable (or major) historical significance. So it wasn't for a lack of interest in the topics. Mostly it was the italics. Miller tells her readers early that she will be using italics to denote any material that is pulled verbatim from an original source. Unfortunately, it meant many of her sentences read something like this. I simply found it too distracting.

Perhaps the more serious charge, though, is that she's written the book in a way that, to me, felt forced. She has tried to heighten the suspense, the drama, the mystery, when a more traditional approach would have been more effective.

Final verdict: Did not finish.

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