cover image The Leaves of Fate

The Leaves of Fate

George Robert Minkoff, McPherson, $24.95 (427p) ISBN 978-0-929701-82-0

The concluding volume of Minkoff's heavyweight Jamestown trilogy (The Weight of Smoke; The Dragons of the Storm) covers 1610 to 1630 and offers a detailed history of the English colonies told in flowery Elizabethan English ("I am all that I know, a motion sensed, a current from forgetfulness"). As the story opens, Capt. John Smith, our narrator, has been exiled from Jamestown by political enemies and forced to return to England, where he writes wildly popular books about the colonies and reminisces in flashbacks to his days as an explorer, soldier, and colonizer; his love for Pocahontas; his adventures with Sir Francis Drake; battles with Indians; and England's many clashes with Spain. Best, however, is Smith's descriptions of life in Jamestown, with its famine, disease, and discord, as well as the rapacious greed of desperate colonists and wealthy London financiers who develop cash crop tobacco in lieu of food, a lament that lives in Smith through a brief reunion with Pocahontas and a crushing denouement. A fitting wrapup to an impressive trilogy, this expansive epic will surely please series fans with its authenticity, intrigue, and stylistic verve. (Dec.)