Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin

Joseph Kelly

Jan 2020 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Bob Souer

About this audiobook

We all know the great American origin story: It begins with an exodus. Fleeing religious persecution, the hardworking, pious Pilgrims thrived in the wilds of New England, where they built their fabled "shining city on a hill." Legend goes that the colony in Jamestown was a false start, offering a cautionary tale of lazy louts who hunted gold till they starved and shiftless settlers who had to be rescued by English food and the hard discipline of martial law. Neither story is true. In Marooned, Joseph Kelly re-examines the history of Jamestown and comes to a radically different and decidedly American interpretation of these first Virginians. In this gripping account of shipwrecks and mutiny in America's earliest settlements, Kelly argues that the colonists at Jamestown were literally and figuratively marooned, cut loose from civilization, and cast into the wilderness. The epic origin of America was not an exodus and a fledgling theocracy. It is a tale of shipwrecked castaways of all classes marooned in the wilderness fending for themselves in any way they could-a story that illuminates who we are as a nation today.

About the author

Joseph Kelly is a professor of literature at the College of Charleston. He is the author of America's Longest Siege: Charleston, Slavery, and the Slow March Toward Civil War and the editor of the Seagull Reader series. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.

Bob Souer is a full-time professional storyteller and narrator. He has narrated numerous audiobooks, as well as broadcast and nonbroadcast projects for corporations and ministries across North America. You've heard Bob's voice on CBS, PBS, the History Channel, and many other networks.