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Affaire de Coeur
"The magazine that brings you honest reviews"
September-October 2003 Reviews

Genesee
by Juliet Waldron

Jacobyte Books

      She was the daughter of an Iroquois warrior and a runaway Dutch teen born during the late 1700’s in upstate New York. Her uncle had traveled into the wilderness in search of his 14-year old-sister, Alyda, but had returned with little Genesee and Anna Big Woman, Genesee’s half-breed wet nurse. So began Genesee’s auspicious beginnings, being of two very different worlds and not truly belonging to either. It was not unheard of for the early Dutch traders to take native wives while they lived in the wilderness, but any children born of those unions were always left with the mothers when their fathers returned to “civilization.”

      Genesee was fiercely loved by her uncle and, until his death, was raised equally with his other children and educated in the ways of the wilderness, the farmer, and the gentlewoman. After the passing of her beloved Uncle Hendrik and the marriage of her stepmother to a Rebel, Genesee’s status in the household abruptly turned to no better than the slaves. Anna Big Woman had been put in a small hut a few yards from the house and, now, Genesee spent her nights there instead of in the main house. Things became so intolerable that Schuyler, Genesee’s older cousin and Hendrik and Trudy’s first born, secretly wrote to their grandparents explaining the situation and asking them to take Genesee into their home in Albany.

      The elder van Cortlandts, wealthy, well-respected members of the Albany Dutch community, had frequently been hosts to their grandchildren because Hendrik had had the foresight to send his children to their grandparents for months at a time to meet their cousins and learn of a world other than the frontier. Since her grandparents loved Genesee, they wholeheartedly welcomed her into their home and, suddenly, Genesee was a “society girl” with the social status and connections. But her skin, hair and eyes were darker than anybody else’s.

      Albany society was not kind, no matter how rich her grandparents were. Jenny longed for her frontier home until the handsome Captain Alexander Dunbar, from the islands of the West Indies, rode into her life and her heart.

      Genesee is a fascinating look into the early life of upstate New York during the [American Revolution]. Juliet Waldron makes you feel as if you’re experiencing Genesee’s trials and tribulations right along side her. The complex family structures, the interactions of the Dutch settlers with the Seneca nations and other Native American tribes, the atrocities committed in the name of war, Genesee returning to her Indian heritage, are all elements that meld very effectively to make this outstanding story one well worth reading over and over.

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