Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks (2011)

Geraldine Brooks has done it again - created a wonderful picture from another time. And that is all I wrote back in 2011 when I read the book. I do remember it, but have to draw on some details from Amazon.

Bethia Mayfield is a girl on Martha's vineyard in the 1660s. Her father is a minister who is trying to convert the Native Americans to Christianity and to educate them. She befriends Caleb, the son of a chieftain, who ends up attending Harvard. I do remember what I loved most about this book - reading about the early days of Harvard, and that it did have one Native American student back then. I have already forgotten what actually happened, but as a result, it took years, maybe even centuries, before another Native American attended Harvard. But even Harvard had its meager beginnings, and the way students were taught, the subjects they were taught was all so fascinating. I was not comparing Harvard to my own Cornell, which was established over 200 years later, but with institutions like Tartu University in Estonia which was founded four years before Harvard, and Vilnius University in Lithuania over 50 years before Harvard. But those were established cultures, while the pilgrims had not been there long before they established this institution of higher learning.