Gunning Examines A Cape Indentured Servant In ‘Bound’

by Debra Lawless

            Accustomed to researching history through old wills, deeds, diaries, town records and business accounts, novelist Sally Gunning ventured out of the archives to investigate spinning wheels on Cape Cod and in colonial Williamsburg, Va. for her new historical novel "Bound" (HarperCollins 2008).

            "Most used a foot wheel," Gunning said during a recent interview from her home in Brewster. "I could not get my brain over how that worked." First Gunning visited Kristal Sunnyside Wools in Brewster, where wool from a sheep farm is spun into yarn. The owner "handed me a piece of raw fleece," Gunning recalls. "My hand was wet with grease." That lanolin, from the sheep, worked its way directly into Gunning's prose: Lyddie and Alice "sat one to a side, picking the bits of pitch, dirt, and matting out of the fleece until they were both slick to the elbows in lanolin."

Brewster author Sally Gunning.

           "It's amazing what hands-on does for you," Gunning says.

            Gunning has lived in Brewster full-time since 1977, but her local roots reach back to the 16^th century. Her forebears include Mayflower passenger William Brewster, and as she discovered while working on her family genealogy, a roguish bunch of "fornicating, card-playing, fined-for-drinking" ancestors.

            "Bound" is a stand-alone sequel to Gunning's 2006 novel "The Widow's War."  Like the previous novel, “Bound" takes place in Setucket Village, modern-day Brewster, as well as Boston. The focus of "The Widow's War" was Lyddie Berry, who loses her husband to drowning in 1761, and then must contend with the late 18th century's practice of depriving widows of their property, leaving them only the "widow's thirds" and putting them under the care of a male relative. Lyddie Berry and her lawyer friend Eben Freeman resurface in "Bound," befriending Alice Cole, through whose eyes this new story is told.

            We first meet Alice in March 1756 at the age of seven when she boards a ship sailing to America from England with her parents and two younger brothers. Gunning vividly evokes the nauseating sights and smells of the voyage across the Atlantic. Only Alice and her father survive the voyage, and on the dock in Boston Alice's father indentures her to a Mr. Morton of Dedham. For the next 11 years Alice's legal status will be as Mr. Morton's slave.

            Yet at first Alice's life resembles that of Mr. Morton's daughter, Nabby, who treats her as a younger sister. When Nabby marries, though, the plot thickens as Alice moves to Nabby's new home. Eventually Alice flees and meets up with Lyddie and Eben in Boston and stows away on their ship to Setucket.

            Gunning, who describes herself as an "amateur Revolutionary War buff," had become interested in slavery on Cape Cod while researching "The Widow's War."

            "Many, many had slaves," she says. "They would call them servants. It was disguised." When she mentioned her potential project to her brother, David Carlson, he remarked, "'all the slaves weren't black, you know.' All of a sudden a light bulb went off," Gunning recalls. "Most indentured servants were white."

            And so Gunning began reading about indentured servants. "It was rife with abuse, a lot of it sexual," she says. "In other cases, they'd be taken into families and treated like a family member." Yet when the family finally freed the servant, at age 18, "all they had to do was give them some clothes and send them off."

            Gunning  based the outlines of her plot on two 18th century diaries. To avoid giving anything away, let us say that the plot of "Bound" revolves around a legal case that is anything but dry, and the tension-filled plot keeps a reader turning the pages. (Gunning knows something about creating suspense—before "The Widow's War" she wrote 10 Cape Cod mysteries set on the fictional “Cape Hook” island of “Nashtoba.")

            Back to the spinning wheel. When Alice fled her master, she was fortunate to find Lyddie and Eben, who took her in without proper papers. She was also fortunate to have great skill in spinning at a time when the colonists began boycotting British cloth and wearing "homespun."

            In Lyddie's keeping room was "a walking wheel, for turning fleece into woolen yarn, not the smaller foot wheel that was used to spin flax into linen."

            A "walking wheel" was generally over five feet tall. Over a day of spinning Alice might “walk” 20 miles: three steps back and three steps forward. "Soon enough the roll of fleece began to draw down and the yarn to build up on the bobbin," Gunning writes.

            "In the part of the house where the spinning wheel was, the floor would be scooped out," Gunning says.

            And what's next for Gunning? She is already researching a third historical novel in which we will again meet some of her familiar characters.

            Gunning will sign copies of "Bound" at Yellow Umbrella Books on Saturday, April 5 from 1 to 3 p.m. She will also sign "Bound" at Where the Sidewalk Ends Books on Saturday, May 24 from 2 to 4 p.m.

4/3/08