Paul Fleischman paints a vivid, lively portrait of Boston in 1681. While a large cast of well-drawn characters moves through the town courting, plotting, arguing, and striving to make a living, the Currie household, who run the town’s printing press, plans to celebrate the forbidden Roman holiday of Saturnalia. William, aka Weetasket, a Narragansett boy indentured to Mr. Currie after his village was destroyed in the Great Swamp Massacre, alternates between studying Latin and Greek with the Curries and roaming the streets at night playing Narragansett songs on his father’s pipe in the hope of finding other survivors. 

Despite its heavy subject matter, this book is not particularly dark. It is full of the tiny tragedies and triumphs of a week in the life of colonial Boston, and many of the anecdotes are comical. Ancient myths and literature are well deployed to enhance the motifs that link the individual characters’ stories together. The theme of role reversals embedded in the Saturnalia pervades the book, and the unprovoked attack on the Narragansett tribe haunts the town. A man offering views through a telescope to passersby interweaves Greek star tales through the stories like a Greek chorus. For William, in particular, the classics become a way to carve a place for himself in a hostile world, which will allow him to preserve whatever he can of his own people and culture. I highly recommend it to all readers, whatever their age. – Krishni Burns