The Secret Token [J0465]

2018 HCDJ in nice clean condition. National Bestseller * A sweeping account of America's oldest unsolved mystery, the people racing to unearth its answer, and the sobering truths--about race, gender, and immigration--exposed by the Lost Colony of Roanoke. In 1587, 115 men, women, and children arrived on Roanoke, an island off the coast of North Carolina. Chartered by Queen Elizabeth I, their colony was to establish a foothold for England in the New World. But by the time the colony's leader, John White, returned to Roanoke from a resupply mission in England, his settlers were nowhere to be found. They had vanished into the wilderness, leaving behind only a single clue--the word "Croatoan" carved into a tree. The disappearance of the Lost Colony became an enduring American mystery. For four centuries, it has gone unsolved, obsessing countless historians, archeologists, and amateur sleuths. Today, after centuries of searching in vain, new clues have begun to surface. In The Secret Token, Andrew Lawler offers a beguiling history of the Lost Colony, and of the relentless quest to bring its fate to light. He accompanies competing archeologists as they seek out evidence, each team hoping to be the first to solve the riddle. In the course of his journey, Lawler explores how the Lost Colony came to haunt our national consciousness, working its way into literature, popular culture, and politics. Incisive and absorbing, The Secret Token offers a new understanding not just of the Lost Colony, but of how its absence continues to define--and divide--America.

From recent-ish Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "Amazingly well written book that will take you through a number of mysterious possibilities."; "I found this fascinating: full of interesting information about the 'lost colony' of Roanoke itself, but also interesting in following up the ways the story has been used by the generations that followed, and how it holds up a mirror to American Society of any given era."; "I was particularly interested in learning about the Lumbee people, whose history and identity I knew absolutely nothing about before this book. The complexity of Lumbee identity, ancestry, community, and the way that identity has developed and been understood over generations opened up an entire part of American history that I had simply never encountered!"; "This was certainly a niche topic and the author squeezed all he could out of it. We have serious historical and scholarly theories, less main-stream theories, and some outright speculation. Definitely enjoyable if you want to spend some time thinking about the earliest English settlements. I particularly enjoyed the time considering how so much of what we see in our history is a reflection of our present."