Ghost Walls: The Story of a 17th-Century Colonial Homestead

In 1638, John Lewger made a home in the wilderness of the New World, in a place called Maryland. He named his house St. John's, and for nearly eighty years, it was the center of an ambitious English plan to build a new kind of community on American soil. Men and women lived and worked within its walls. Babies were born. Last breaths drawn. St. John's walls witnessed the first stirrings of the great struggles that would dominate the continent for the next three centuries: The unimaginable wealth of the New World's crops and natural resources. The promise of religious tolerance under a new model of government. The injustice of slavery. The betrayal of native peoples. The struggle for equality between men and women. If St. John's walls could have talked, they would have spoken volumes of American history.

And then the walls crumbled. One hundred years after it was built, St. John's House had been abandoned. The buildings slowly deteriorated, returning to the Maryland soil to be plowed under by generations of Maryland farmers. St. John's walls were silent for more than two centuries, little more than ghosts haunting the historical and archeological records.

But they weren't lost. Not entirely.

Award-winning author Sally M. Walker tells the story of how teams of scientists and historians managed to hear the ghostly echoes of St. John's House and, over the course of decades of painstaking work, made them speak their stories again.

Author: Sally M. Walker
Publisher: Carolrhoda Books (R)
Published: 10/01/2014
Pages: 136
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 10.33h x 7.40w x 0.53d
ISBN: 9780761354086

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 7.6
Point Value: 5
Interest Level: Middle Grade Plus
Quiz #/Name: 168446 / Ghost Walls: The Story of a 17th Century Colonial Homestead


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 09/01/2014
Booklist 09/15/2014 pg. 49
Bulletin of Ctr for Child Bks 01/01/2015
Hornbook Guide to Children 01/01/2015 - Recommended, Satisfactory

About the Author
Walker, Sally M.: - Sally M. Walker has been a children's book writer for over 20 years. Most of her books are nonfiction and present various science topics to young readers. Fossil Fish Found Alive is the story of the hunt for the elusive fish called the coelacanth. Sally also enjoys combining science investigation with historical topics. Her book Secrets of a Civil War Submarine, which won the 2006 Robert F. Sibert Medal, tells about the history, loss, and re-discovery of the first submarine to sink an enemy ship in battle. Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland takes readers on archaeological expeditions, where the forensic analysis of colonial settlers' bones helps us to understand their lives. Sally especially enjoys writing narrative nonfiction that captures the reader's attention with a true story. She is also the author of 2019 Orbis Pictus Honor Book Champion: The Comeback Tale of the American Chestnut.

This title is only available via back order