Published April 12, 2022
Kimberly Brock is the award-winning author of The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare and The River Witch. She is the founder of Tinderbox Writers Workshop and has served as a guest lecturer for many regional and national writing workshops including at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. She lives near Atlanta with her husband and three children.
Photo cred: Claire Brock Photography
The Grateful Reader Review by Dorothy Schwab
History, mystery, and myths are the ingredients blended into The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare. The journal or ‘lost book” is a Commonplace Book, over 400 years old, kept by generations of Dare women. The history of the Colony of Roanoke and Sir Walter Raleigh, 1587, told by Eleanor Dare is alternated with first person narratives by war widow Alice, slowly uncovering her inner self, and her 13-year-old daughter Penn’s newly discovered quest. Emotions from the past stirred with mother-daughter relationships create a dangerous concoction; one that keeps readers hanging on Kimberly Brock’s accounts of Eleanor and the Lost Colony of Roanoke and the rebuilding and decisions to be made about Evertell mansion by the women who now own it. From a radio receiving messages high up in the cupola to a mysterious stone tower at the edge of the forest hiding a chandlery, to the peacocks and Tybee Island, readers will savor Brock’s imagery in descriptions, the loving, endearing character traits, and the search for that silvery light that was supposed to be inside the heirs of Eleanor Dare. Brock slowly reveals Alice’s story as the “peeling layers” of fear and grief gives way to her daughter Penn’s coming of age as the Commonplace Book is discovered and treasured by both mother and daughter. Readers travel from the lonely coast of North Carolina in 1587 to Evertell on the banks of the Savannah River 1945, with some surprising twists. Kimberly Brock’s The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare, truth mixed with myth, is haunting and memorable.
What Happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke? This is the beginning of an article from this website: https://www.history.com/news/what-happened-to-the-lost-colony-of-roanoke
“The origins of one of the America’s oldest unsolved mysteries can be traced to August 1587, when a group of about 115 English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina. Later that year, it was decided that John White, governor of the new colony, would sail back to England in order to gather a fresh load of supplies. But just as he arrived, a major naval war broke out between England and Spain, and Queen Elizabeth I called on every available ship to confront the mighty Spanish Armada. In August 1590, White finally returned to Roanoke, where he had left his wife and daughter, his infant granddaughter (Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the Americas) and the other settlers three long years before. He found no trace of the colony or its inhabitants, and few clues to what might have happened, apart from a single word—“Croatoan”—carved into a wooden post.”
The Grateful Reader 