The Heart's Highway: A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century

The narrator, a disgraced man who becomes a tutor after crossing to Virginia, recalls his life among a prominent family in the seventeenth-century colony. He describes daily routines, plantation landscapes, and the household's three generations, including a vivacious young woman whose presence stirs his imagination and emotional conflict. The narrative traces courtship and social friction shaped by class, reputation, and family obligation, alternating intimate observation with vivid natural description. Themes include the weight of personal disgrace, the restraining codes of propriety, and the ways affection and imagination reshape ordinary life in a colonial community.