Virginia by Shannon McNear

Virginia by Shannon McNear
Series: book four in the Daughters of the Lost Colony series
Publisher: Barbour Fiction (September 1, 2024)

REVIEW BY PRISCILLA BETTIS

Even though Virginia is book four in McNear’s Daughters of the Lost Colony series, it works perfectly well as a standalone. 

Virginia is a coming-of-age novel about Virginia Dare, the real-life first English baby born in America. She was born in 1587 on Roanoke Island, so that gives you a feeling for the time period and location of McNear’s story. I was totally immersed in Virginia’s world: colonial housing, simple food, untouched forests and rivers, American Indians, a very old Bible translation (The Great Bible of 1539), and just enough language of the time to flavor the dialogue without making it difficult to understand.

At the beginning of the book, Virginia (or “Ginny”) is fourteen. She and her friends Henry and Redbud are kidnapped by Iroquois. Will they end up as slaves? Be tortured or killed? Ginny leans heavily on her Christian faith during this time, and the message is clear: God is good no matter our circumstances.

A love story emerges within the pages. Because of her dire circumstances, Ginny fights her romantic feelings, but I knew she was a goner when I read:

The skin markings on his arms and legs begged to be traced with a fingertip. Cheeks flaming, she dragged her gaze back to his face, to the long lashes gracing his cheekbones, the high, arched brows, the full lips, slightly parted.
-Shannon McNear, Virginia

Besides scenes packed with historical intrigue and romance, McNear writes some plain-fun fight scenes, the kind that make you hold your breath and duck from a bad guy’s swing at the same time the characters duck.

A heads-up for sensitive readers: there is a difficult execution scene (though it’s thankfully short and DEFINITELY contributes to the Christian message of the novel), and there is a Protestant vs Catholic vibe. To the latter point, McNear says in her author’s notes, “It remains an unalterable fact of this time period that people of different religious and political backgrounds spoke of each other in the most scathing terms.” I understand McNear’s point, but personally, it still made me uncomfortable, so I took off a fish.

Overall, Virginia is an adventurous, romantic, historical novel with a solid Christian message.

I purchased the Kindle version of Virginia.