Bound (Gunning)

Bound 
Sally Gunning, 2008
HarperCollins
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061240263


Summary
Alice Cole spent her first seven years living in two smoky, crowded rooms in London with her family. But a new home and a better life waited in the colonies, or so her father promised—a bright dream that turned to ashes when her brothers and mother took ill and died during the arduous voyage. Arriving in New England unable to meet the added expenses incurred by their misfortunes at sea, her father bound Alice into servitude to pay his debts.

By the age of fifteen, Alice can barely remember the time when she was not a servant to John Morton and his daughter, Nabby. Though work fills her days, life with the Mortons is pleasant; Mr. Morton calls Alice his "sweet, good girl," and Nabby, only three years older, is her friend, companion, and now newly married, her mistress.

But Nabby's marriage is not happy, and soon Alice is caught up in its storm; seeing nothing ahead but her own destruction, she defies her new master and the law and runs away to Boston. There she meets a sympathetic widow named Lyddie Berry and her lawyer companion, Eben Freeman. Frightened and alone, Alice impulsively stows away on their ship to Satucket on Cape Cod, where the Widow Berry offers Alice a bed and a job making cloth in support of the new boycott of British wool and linen.

At Widow Berry's, Alice believes her old secret is safe, until it becomes threatened by a new one. As the days pass, the political and the personal stakes rise and intertwine, ultimately setting off a chain of events that will force Alice to question all she thought she knew. Bound by law, society, and her own heart, Alice soon discovers that freedom—as well as gratitude, friendship, trust, and love—has a price far higher than any she ever imagined.

Library Journal hailed Sally Gunning's previous novel, The Widow's War, as "historical fiction at its best." With Bound, this wonderfully talented writer returns to pre-Revolutionary New England and evokes a long-ago time filled with uncertainty, hardship, and promise. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Her own words:
I came to writing at a young age, driven to it in desperation one rainy day when I ran out of books; my main influences at the time being Dr. Seuss and parents who heartily subscribing to the puritan work ethic, my first effort was a poem about making my bed. I continued to tinker with poems and snippets through Winnie-the-Pooh and my brother's Hardy Boys books, but when I hit Salinger's Catcher in the Rye I knew that sooner or later I was going to have to try to write a book. It turned out to be later—after going to college and working as a chambermaid, a stewardess on a cruise ship, a tour guide in a Revolutionary War museum, and staff of one in an old-fashioned country doctor's office.

But one day that doctor decided to do a novel thing—he decided to take a day off, and he liked it so much he decided to do it once a week. That extra day off turned into my writing day—I sealed myself in the dining room with my typewriter; I told friends and family not to call; I didn't shop, clean, do laundry mow the lawn, or go to the beach. Another kind of writer might have entered that room immediately aspiring to the heights of one her writing idols—Harper Lee or Jane Austen in my case—but Lee and Austen had already taught me my first important lesson: I didn't yet know how to write. So I walked into that room thinking Hardy Boys instead.

I thought of that first book as an exercise in novel-writing, a way to teach myself about plot, pace, and structure—in other words, as an exercise in learning how to tell a story. It never occurred to me that very first book would actually sell, or that it would result in a series of contracts that kept me writing mystery novels for the next ten years of my life. But ten years later I found myself asking, wasn't there another kind of story I needed to tell?

I'm often asked where the switch from mystery to historical fiction came from; although there's the usual long answer to the question, the short answer is that it came out of the ground. My husband Tom and I live in Brewster, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, a place my ancestors had discovered for us about three hundred years before we rode into town. Every day we walk over ancient Indian paths and colonial roads past houses that were built when my ancestors first arrived; we can look out our window at an ocean that cost more than one ancestor his life; we've lived through storms that have left us without heat, light, water, and gasoline for as long as five days, plunging us, however briefly, into the kind of life those ancestors lived.

Living so physically and psychically close to the past inevitably led me to want to know more about it; I began to read every book on Cape Cod history I could find, and bit by bit the Cape's past began to make its way into my novels. That was a start, but it wasn't enough; from own family's history I knew there were stories out there that hadn't yet surfaced. I began to dig out old wills, deeds, diaries, town records, business accounts. I found that the same mix of large-hearted, small-minded, lustful, self-righteous humanity filled the past as filled the present, and when I found Lyddie Berry I knew I'd found the story I needed to tell. The Widow's War was that story. And out of an eighteenth century diary I discovered while writing The Widow's War I found Alice Cole, the indentured servant whose story gave birth to my next novel, Bound. I have no doubt that my next story is back there somewhere in the past, waiting for its chance to connect with the present. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Skillfully employing the language, imagination and character that literary fiction demands, [Gunning] illuminates a fascinating moment in our past.
Washington Post Book World

Heartrending.... Gunning’s vibrant portrayal shows that the pursuit of happiness is not for the faint of heart.
Boston Globe

A well written, thought provoking mid-eighteenth century thriller.
Midwest Book Review

This book, eloquently written and exhaustively researched, is a warning along the lines of The Handmaid’s Tale, and just as necessary a read.
Feminist Review

In Gunning's latest colonial page-turner, seven-year-old Alice Cole travels with her family from 1756 London to the New World, dreaming of a big house in Philadelphia and a new life. Her mother and brothers die on board and are buried at sea; the ship docks in Boston rather than Philadelphia; there, her father indentures her for 11 years without a backward glance. Alice does housework for the family of Simeon Morton of Dedham, in whose house she is treated almost like a second daughter, becoming constant companion to 10-year-old Abigail, or "Nabby." When Nabby marries Emery Verley of Medfield, Alice's indenture is signed over to him, but the Verley household turns out to be an abusive one. Alice flees and winds up on Satucket, Cape Cod, where Lyddie Berry, heroine of Gunning's The Widow's War, and her companion, the lawyer Eben Freeman, give her shelter and a job. Alice works hard for them, and they grow fond of her, but when Alice discovers she's pregnant, she embarks on a journey of deceit and lies, one that comes to a bitter end. Gunning weaves a horrifying, spellbinding story of colonial indenture's cruelties and a meditation on the meaning of freedom.
Publishers Weekly


Gunning reprises many of the characters from her 2006 novel, The Widow's War, in this suspenseful and engaging look at the New England colonies in the decades immediately preceding the American Revolution. Richly detailed and impeccably researched, the novel focuses on the life of Alice Cole, beginning with her arrival in Massachusetts as a seven-year-old child. In short order, Alice's father indentures her, forcing the girl to spend 11 years working to pay off a family debt. While her first taskmaster is kind, teaching her to read, write, and calculate, the second is not. A rape occurs, and Alice flees to Cape Cod, where she finds refuge and employment with a widow and her on-again/off-again boarder. Life, however, is far from simple, and the ensuing drama forces the now-adolescent Alice to grapple with what it means to pursue personal freedom. What's more, as she struggles to integrate past and present, the era's sexual politics and religious and political fervor come alive. The result is moving, compelling, and beautifully wrought; highly recommended for historical fiction collections.
Eleanor Bader - Library Journal


A young indentured servant in pre-Revolutionary War Massachusetts escapes her brutal master and begins a new life on Cape Cod in Gunning's sequel to her well-received The Widow's War (2006). Seven-year-old Alice Cole's destitute father sells her into indentured servitude and disappears from her life in 1756, as soon as they arrive in Boston after a harrowing passage from London. Mr. Morton is a benevolent master and his daughter Nabby becomes Alice's friend. When Nabby marries, Alice, now 15, goes with Nabby to complete her last three years of servitude. But because pre-Revolutionary law states that a husband owns everything his wife brings to the marriage, Nabby's husband, Mr. Verley, now owns Alice. Verley is a monster of barely believable proportions, raping Alice repeatedly while making sure Nabby knows and grows jealous. After a vicious beating that leaves her cheek scarred, Alice escapes. She stows away on a ship to Cape Cod, where she is taken in by the plucky, generous widow Liddy Berry. Liddy's boarder Eben Freeman is a lawyer, deeply involved in fighting the unfair taxes Britain has begun imposing on the colonies. Liddy and Alice begin a weaving business to replace imported British cloth. Readers of Gunning's earlier book will know that Liddy and Eben have more than a friendship going, but Alice has no clue. When Alice realizes Verley impregnated her, she tries, unsuccessfully, to hide her condition. When her baby dies shortly after birth, Alice is charged with murder and fornication. Eben helps clear her, but she then must face charges in Boston as a runaway slave. Alice is a mix of conniving and innocence, and her relationship with Liddy and Eben has intriguing undertones, but the lesser characters remain caricatures. Painting in broader strokes this time around, Gunning never adequately integrates her history lesson with the sexual intrigue.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Bound explores the different kinds of ties that bind one person to another. Of the various bonds explored in this novel, which ones do you feel should have been preserved? Which broken?

2. Alice is a person both old and young for her age. In what ways do you feel she mature and in what ways immature?

3. How would you describe Alice's expectations of life? How do you see these changing through in the course of the book?

4. Do you think Alice feels sorry for herself? Why or why not?

5. Alice refers several times to the idea that a man's eyes are on her. Do you think all men's eyes really are on Alice, or does she just perceive it to be so?

6. In the beginning of the book Nate greatly admires Freeman. Toward the end he appears to become disillusioned. What do you think causes this change? How do you think he feels about Freeman at the end?

7. Do you feel Mr. Morton deserves Alice's prayers?

8. Do agree with Nate's opinion that Freeman would have surely ended up “touching” Alice? Do you think Nate really believes this? If he doesn't, why does he say it?

9. Discuss what Alice wants/needs from Freeman and whether it would be possible to achieve.

10. Do you think Nate really planned to go to Pownalborough?

11. Can you think of reasons Alice hasn't considered that Lyddie might consider as she debates whether to give up her dower right and marry Freeman?

12. Do you see Lyddie Berry's and Eben Freeman's feelings toward Alice changing through the course of the novel? If so, how and why?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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