This gripping, shocking, and exquisitely crafted survival story reveals the truth of America’s colonial history in a powerful new way—visceral and breathtaking.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Alena Bruzas’ To The Bone, which is out September 10th 2024.
After the long journey from England, Ellis arrives in America full of hope. James Fort is where a better life will begin for her: where she will work as an indentured servant to Henry Collins and his pregnant wife, gain financial security, and fall deeply in love with bold, glorious Jane Eddowes.
But as summer turns to fall, Ellis begins to notice the cracks in this new life—the viciousness of the colonists toward the Indigenous people and the terrifying anger Henry uses to control his wife and Ellis—leaving her to wonder if she has sentenced herself to a prison rather than a new home.
Then winter arrives and hunger grips the Fort. Ellis is about to learn that people will do whatever it takes to survive.
To the Bone is a riveting story of survival and horror that forcefully overturns the mythos of the American settler. It will stay with you, forever.
ONE
Master Collins says I can call him Henry, though yet it feels strange to say it. He says will I get water and wait in the storehouse line for the grain. But oh it is hot. My head hurts from it and my eyes feel swollen and my skin is tight and red. It already peels like birch bark. But I go outside where the heat is sharp, with buckets banging against my legs.
Henry, Master Collins, is already brown from the sun. His face and forearms. When he took off his shirt I saw the white skin of his chest and shoulders and stomach. I shouldn’t have looked, but I did. I am either white or red and peeling.
In the line there is some number of whispering women ahead of me. I set my buckets down by my ankles and scratch a bite through my hose.
Jane Eddowes slips through the line. She pokes her mother in the side as she passes and Mistress Eddowes jumps and smiles at Jane, who is wicked with her grin and her eyes like the deepest part of twilight. Mistress Eddowes waves Jane away from the chore of waiting for our grain. I’m standing, shifting in the hot hot sun, burning my cheeks and forehead and nose.
When the cape merchant allows me inside the dark building to collect our grain, it is less again. I watch the kernels as they slide into my basket, lined with linen to save every precious grain. Another measure he pours. One and one and one and one and one and one. I don’t know how to count but I know the rhythm and he stops too soon.
I look up at him but he won’t answer for it. “Go now,” he says.
The Sea Venture was supposed to arrive in August. At the same time as Jane. At the same time as me. We left home at the same time in our fleet of ships. But there was a hurricane. In the humid dark, we were battered against the sweating walls of the hull, the sounds of retching, the smell of vomit, praying, crying. They said we couldn’t have any light to avoid fire but I kept my eyes closed anyway.
The men on the bulwarks watch for the Sea Venture every day, their necks craning. Jane says that our food was on it. Salt pork and beef, dried peas, hard biscuits, onions, and limes. It was lost in the hurricane, but perhaps it didn’t sink. Perhaps it will come tomorrow morning. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. But it doesn’t come.
Jane is in the wellhouse. “Do you know?” she says. Her hair is white from the sun and her skin is dark gold because her father is indulgent and lets her play outside though yet she’s too old for it.
“What?”
“Master Adam and Master Franz, they went back to the country people.” Jane pulls her bucket from the well. Her sleeves are pushed up and her muscles roll under her skin. “But they killed them.”
“Who?”
“The country people killed Master Adam and Master Franz. And why should they trust them, I wonder. Master Adam and Master Franz are faithless. They had their heads beaten with clubs until they were dead.” She splashes water on her flushed cheeks. “Ellis,” she says, putting her wet hand on my arm. “Upriver there is a place where the water is shallow and slow and Rowan says the country people let us be. Come with me! We can swim.”
“I can’t swim,” I say, but I don’t move her hand from my arm.
“We can wade. You don’t have to swim.”
Her eyes are bright and I want to please her and be naked with her in the water, but I shake my head.
“Master Collins says I must tend to Mistress Collins. She’s unwell.”
Jane rolls her eyes. “Again?”
I reproach her with my frown but then I can’t help it and smile, waving as she walks the buckets back to her house and then, I suppose, to go swim, perhaps with Rowan, though yet she is too old to be playing naked with boys. We are both too old. In a year or two we could be married and yet still she plays like a child.
At home I was lost. I had lost everybody and everybody was lost to me. Here, I have food to eat. Some complain it is not enough, but it is enough for me. Here, I have a home with Master and Mistress Collins.
I have Jane.
Here, it is beautiful.
I don’t know if we had a good life when I was small. I know that the things I worry about now, like food and warmth, are not things I worried about when I was small. Then, I only knew about the things they told me, and they didn’t tell me much.
I remember once that Papa brought me with him to haggle at the meat market, and he bought me roasted chestnuts and said not to tell Mama. When I asked why not, he didn’t answer. He only smiled and tugged me along the quay to look at the birds riding the wind. I know now that we didn’t have the money for chestnuts and he didn’t want Mama to be angry with him.
I don’t know why Papa had to leave to come here. I don’t know why he believed it was his only choice. Sometimes we bought the good flour, the fine white sugar. Sometimes we made marzipan or cakes. Sometimes Papa brought home mutton instead of fish or salt beef. Mama had time to play. She would kneel on the floor with me and play kings and queens with the small toy people Papa whittled. Or she would play cracht cradle. I remember when she taught me Jacob’s ladder. I tied my finger in a knot by accident and Mama giggled at me like she was small.
But then Mama would never play. We never had honey or cream for our porridge anymore. Mama took in the little girls from the room above us for pay, and she bent over her bone lace by the rushlight late, after I was supposed to be asleep. And though yet there were times she wasn’t doing work, she would only sit and stare and rub her calloused fingers together.
Papa said there was a place for him on a ship. He said we could follow him later when he had land and a house. He said it was the only place we could ever hope to own land and not always pay rent. He said maybe he could get out from under debt, finally finally.
Mama cried. She didn’t want him to go. She was afraid to be without him. What if something happened to him? What would she do? Where would we go?
I would push my cold toes into Franny’s legs and listened to them argue. Franny slept through it, like she always did. She slept deep and hard, even when I had bad dreams and woke up screaming.
And then, some number of months later, Papa was gone.
