Rosie’s Avid Readers #RBRT Virgin Earth by Phillipa Gregory

Rosie’s Avid Reader posts are from people who love reading, they tell us about books they’ve been reading, they are not connected to authors, they just love reading. They are the people who say, “I’ve just read this really good book….”

Book Blub;

As England descends into civil war, John Tradescant the Younger, gardener to King Charles I, finds his loyalties in question, his status an ever-growing danger to his family. Fearing royal defeat and determined to avoid serving the rebels, John escapes to the royalist colony of Virginia, a land bursting with fertility that stirs his passion for botany. Only the native American peoples understand the forest, and John is drawn to their way of life just as they come into fatal conflict with the colonial settlers.

Torn between his loyalty to his country and family and his love for a Powhatan girl who embodies the freedom he seeks, John has to find himself before he is prepared to choose his direction in the virgin land.

In this enthralling, freestanding sequel to Earthly Joys, Gregory combines a wealth of gardening knowledge with a haunting love story that spans two continents and two cultures, making Virgin Earth a tour de force of revolutionary politics and passionate characters.

My Avid readers’ thoughts:

Virgin Earth by Phillipa Gregory.

It is about John Tradescant who after his father, John ‘ was gardener to Charles the first. When things got difficult, coming up to the English civil war he left his family and went to America. For a while he lived as and with the Indians, including a girl friend, all the time collecting plants. After several years and when things had settled down in this country he came home with all his plants and took up his life looking after the gardens of the Royal Palaces. I enjoyed it being partly historical and it is by way of being a social history.

Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

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