Hope Leslie, or, Early times in the Massachusetts
By: Catharine Maria Sedgwick ; edited and with an introduction and notes by Carolyn L. Karcher.
Contributors: Karcher, Carolyn L., 1945-
Series: Penguin classics
Publisher: Penguin Books; Penguin Classics
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 399
Subjects: Indians of North America -- Massachusetts -- Fiction.; Women -- Massachusetts -- Fiction.; Massachusetts -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction.
Other titles: Hope Leslie; Early times in the Massachusetts
Description: Set in seventeenth-century New England, Hope Leslie (1827) portrays early American life and celebrates the role of women in building the republic. A counterpoint to the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, it challenges the conventional view of Indians, tackles interracial marriage and cross-cultural friendship, and claims for women their rightful place in history.

At the center of the novel are two friends. Hope Leslie, a spirited thinker in a repressive Puritan society, fights for justice for the Indians and asserts the independence of women. Magawisca, the passionate daughter of a Pequot chief, braves her father's wrath to save a white man and risks her freedom to reunite Hope with her long-lost sister, captured as a child by the Pequots and now married to Magawisca's brother.

Amply plotted, with unforgettable characters, Hope Leslie is a rich, compelling, deeply satisfying novel.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. xxxix-xliv).