Beheld

From the bestselling author of The Wives of Los Alamos comes a riveting story of the first murder in Plymouth, Massachusetts--a crime that shook the fledging colony to its core. It begins with a killing. Ten years after the Mayflower struck shore on rocky, unfamiliar soil, Plymouth is not the land its residents had imagined. Seemingly established on a dream of religious freedom, the town is led by fervent Puritans who prevent the Anglican residents from worshiping as they choose. The Billingtons--Anglicans, outsiders, and rebels--have just about had enough, and that's when a stranger arrives. With gripping, immersive details and beautiful prose, TaraShea Nesbit reframes the story of the pilgrims in the historically under-recorded voices of two women of very different status and means. She evokes a vivid, ominous Plymouth, populated by famous and unknown characters alike, each with conflicting desires and questionable behavior. Suspenseful and literary, Beheld is about a murder and a trial; but it's also about the motivations--personal and political--that cause people to act in unsavory ways. Whose stories get told over time, who gets believed--and subsequently, who gets punished? Beheld is an intimate, personal portrait of love, motherhood, and friendship, and an exploration of what people lose and what they struggle to maintain.