Blood on the River by Elisa Carbone

Here is my review:
Samuel Collier is a poor boy that gets sent to Virginia with Captain John Smith and others. His story is what Jamestown went through from 1607 through 1609. The hardships, the struggles, and even the peace are true to what really happened. The story is seen through the experiences of Samuel.

Elisa Carbone is an amazing writer not to have only done the research in order to write this book but to know that it needed to be done. There are so many books about this topic and this one I really felt came close to what actually happened. I was impressed with her writing style and her blunt honesty. There were a lot of instances where she had to change a few facts. But the main part of the story was all taken from journals not only written by John Smith but other settlers. Things can be skewed at times but I really believe she did the best possible work that she could with the information she had. I was thoroughly impressed with how well the book turned out and how it stayed true to fact. Yes, it is a fiction book because you have to write a story with and change few things to make it interesting. If it were a non-fiction book, it would be more precise with facts and figures. It might not be as enjoyable as this book was for me.

Samuel Collier was a real person and that is what I must not forget. The Virginia Company had one thing in mind to be rich to the point that they kept sending people over there without telling them the truth of how hard it was to live in that area. I knew that there were selfish people during that time but I couldn’t believe how far they took it and because of it how many people were lost. That was what upset me the most is the greed that was there and how they were willing to let anything happen just to fulfill it. It also saddened me because they weren’t willing to work with all the different tribes of Indians to make it a better community.

This is one rare book I give it a 5/5. Not only did I feel like I was there but I felt all the emotions Samuel felt from the beginning of the book to the last sentence. I wish more people would feel like doing the research because the books would be better written and as close to reality as you can get with there being numerous accounts. I am pleased with what Elisa Carbone did and I plan on writing her to tell her so. This book will be with me for a long time and I plan on owning it so that I can share it with my son so he can have a better sense of what happened.

Now onto reading something else. :) I hope to be able to tell you about it once I have finished it. :)