Prisons

Beulah Quintet #1

by Mary Lee Settle

Prisons, the first volume of The Beulah Quintet - Mary Lee Settle's unforgettable generational saga about the roots of American culture, class, and identity and the meaning of freedom - follows the coming-of-age of Johnny Church from English youngster to dashing Oxford adolescent to idealistic Puritan in the service of Cromwell's Parliamentary Army. Throughout his evolution, Johnny seeks emancipation from a multitude of emotional, political, and religious prisons, not realizing that with each successive grasp at freedom, he escapes one form of captivity only to be confined by another. When Cromwell, the leader Johnny has supported so staunchly, limits the freedoms for which Johnny has taken up arms, he bravely questions the commander. Shortly thereafter he finds himself held in a prison of stone and mortar where, as an example to other soldiers tempted to champion their rights, he is executed. Based on a true incident of the English Civil War, Prisons captures the promise and tragedy of the conflict that led to one of the first substantial migrations to North America and lays the foundation for the next chapter in Settle's riveting saga - O Beulah Land.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, British Literature, 17th Century

244 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 12, 1981

About the author

Graduate of Sweet Briar College. Winner of the National Book Award in 1978 for Blood Tie.

Reviews

[Kallie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must for those interested in American history. This novel (the first in the Beulah Quintet series) takes the reader to 17th century England, and the conflicts that led to our fuller realization of democracy (at great cost to some, one must say). The dynamics, threats and betrayals Ms. Settle evokes in such brilliant detail are as relevant now as they were 300 years ago. Her devotion to research, and keen, convincing voice, bring place and people to life so ably, the story completely transcends the historical novel genre. I have ordered the second novel in the series, and hope it arrives today so I can make 'O Beulah Land' the next story I read.

[Rhonda · Rating 3 out of 5]

fascinating, the way she wrote this; takes you back to a dreary chapter of war-history during Cromwell's England. evocative of the dirtiness and craziness of war, in my opinion. the writing shows meticulous research and love of history.

[Jim Grimsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good companion read to Morrison's A Mercy, from the same era of history, on the opposite side of the ocean, and with a different form of narrative. The voice of John Church tells the story, moving back and forth in time from childhood to his days in the parliamentarian army during the English civil war. Settle's writing is sure-handed and exact, and shares with Morrison the economy of its approach. The story is not drowned in historical detail but rather shapes itself precisely as if it were the memory of Church, sometimes focused on moments that expand into a tactile tapestry and other times pulling back to look at passages of time, avoiding the monotony of the army experience, for instance, when, as he says, most of the service was waiting and next-most was marching. But the book is not one in which a reader loses himself to a sense of the other world; the reading here is colder than that, though the story itself is very deeply felt. My sense of the other characters in the book was in general that they were objects that the writer picked up and put down; useful but not rich. The character of John's aunt, who is also the mother of his illegitimate child, and of Thankful Perkins, his best friend, were the most complex of the portraits. But this is not psychological fiction. This is something equally rich but less engaging to the emotions. The background is full of vivid still-life depictions of characters seen for a moment, then gone. There is a satisfying and somewhat sardonic motif of a woman who is cooking a goose at the same time that she betrays John and Thankful from their hiding place; they eat the cooked goose when they are imprisoned; and later their own goose is cooked when they are shot as traitors by Cromwell. Settle looks on this novel as an examination of the origins of American ideas of freedom, liberty, and conscience, and it is satisfying as that. An eerie counterpoint to the week before the inauguration of Joe Biden. The voice of the novel is spiced with archaisms, but not overly so; the dialog made me giggle a bit, but it's superior to that in her book O Beulah Land, which I am reading now. She is a really distinctive and powerful writer who knows her business.

[Susan Beecher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine novel that had me looking up my English history to figure out what they were fighting about in 1600s England.

[Benny Kjaer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written, heartwrenching story set during the English Civil War.
Settle's sparse prose manages to capture the language of the time.
How did she do it so well?

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm normally very skeptical of historical fiction, because half of the genre is dominated by pretentious stuffed shirts who know their history well and have a snooze-inducing narrative voice, while the other half is populated by people who know next to nothing about history at all and appear determined to display that ignorance proudly with little time spent constructing a story. I also tend to be suspicious of any series of novels longer than three books because that is usually a pretty good sign the author's just writing whatever crap will sell without regard to crafting a quality story. Even worse, I tend to be profoundly reticent to invest any time in a story that crosses generations. There are exceptions to each of these cases where the trend is that I find only poorly written pablum, but to combine all three served to make me put off reading this book for a full year.

On Christmas, several of us gathered around the tree gave each other used booksas gifts, in addition to the usual gift-giving. The idea was to help each other broaden our reading horizons so we wouldn't fall into reading ruts to try new things. Prisons was one of the books I got. After struggling halfway through DH Lawrence's purple novel of spite and dull melodrama, Women In Love, before giving up on it, I was not motivated to touch Prisons. Finally, after the next year's Christmas gathering was put on hold for weather, I decided to try reading Prisons before our delayed gathering. I'm glad I did.

Early on I became even more skeptical of my likely enjoyment of the book, because the first half of it heavily uses a literary technique that is usually terribly abused and does nothing for a story: flashbacks. In fact, at first, the entire story was taking place in flashbacks. I was, however, slightly encouraged by the authenticity of the "present" events that framed the flashbacks -- the plodding life of a soldier on the road, strikingly familiar to me as an ex-soldier myself. A bit more encouragement came in the form of the evocative tone of the flashback text, the depth of characters, and eventually the way all the various threads started to come together to be woven into a well-crafted first-person narrative. The fact it unapologetically makes use of a first-person perspective inside the character's head rather than tritely justifying by way of letters or journal entries the way lesser period novels often do (such as The Illusionist) helped keep it from foundering as well.

By the time I was halfway through the book, I had realized I was reading something quite remarkable in its craftsmanship. I don't want to go into details of the story, but it is moving, comprehensive in its attention to the salient details of the story and its protagonist's life, and deeply philosophical without preaching or falling into self-conscious pretensions. Even the villains of the piece are thoroughly humanized in shocking clarity, in some cases long before there is any hint of their antagonistic place in the plot.

One might be tempted to assign a moral to the story, identifying it as a parable illustrating any of half a dozen or so oft-repeated clichés that we've all heard -- "power corrupts", for instance -- but doing so will only lend a superficial character to the story that it doesn't deserve. Take it as it comes, rather than trying to impose your own sense of what it is (or should be) about. Find out what it means for you after you have read the thing and it has time to sink in. Then, like me, push it on your friends and relatives, because it's an excellent book, and my only complaint is to myself for waiting so long to read it.

EDIT: I read the first quarter of O Beulah Land, the second book in the series, and it was so awful I had to stop reading it and write a very negative one-star review. As I said in my final line of that review, "Screw it. I have better things to do with my time. I still heartily recommend Prisons, but would warn any curious readers away from O Beulah Land." The contrast in quality between these two books is shockingly stark, though I can see the hints of the two works being produced by the same author. As it happens, the second book in the series was written seventeen years before the first book -- this book -- and what I can only assume is the growth and maturing of the author's "voice" really shows.

[Rada · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story was good. but the language made it a more challenging read. Also the reader needed to pay attention because the author would switch back and forth between the present and flashbacks without making it obvious.

[Pammy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I fell for the writing style of Ms Settle in previous books. She carries that passion for high drama to the pages of Prisons, but missed the mark for me personally.
I knew she did extensive research at the British Museum and has brought that to this story of 17th century England, based on a bloody English Civil War. She explores the questions of what men are willing to die for: "the meaning of religion, the rights of kings, freedom of speech, and suffrage for all men."
This one paves the way for future books by tracing this time period in history across the ocean to Appalachian region preparing to embark on its own battles for Democracy.