What is the setting of Caleb's Crossing: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks?

The book's setting in both time and place is essential to both its plot and its thematic considerations. The time is the mid-late 1600s to the early 1700s, a period in which the humanist reforms of the Reformation were still percolating their mind-and-soul opening way through Europe, but which had been escaped by a considerable number of Puritans. Puritans were extremely conservative Christians who believed in the Bible as the one, true, absolute word of God, its every word to be obeyed. Among other things, they valued extreme hard work, submission of women to men and, elimination of any/all pleasure (i.e., singing, dancing, drinking alcohol, perceiving eating and/or sex as anything other than purely utilitarian or functional).

The characters in Caleb's Crossing are Puritans, having escaped Europe (specifically Britain) and settling in a free land in which they could practice and/or act upon their religious beliefs. They were physically isolated from anything and everything they had ever really known, forced to discover and develop new ways of farming, building construction and maintenance, animal husbandry, and above all interpersonal relationships, the latter with a community of human beings (natives) whose ways were entirely alien.

In short, Bethia and the other characters are strangers in a strange land that is, bit by bit, becoming more familiar and less frightening, but is still nonetheless overwhelmingly difficult to tame and ultimately, dependent on the will and cooperation of the community to survive (the same, by the way, could also be said of Caleb's native community). This setting, then, in which community and the good and/or ways of all are of paramount importance, is a powerful and challenging setting for a story, such as this one is, of individuals struggling for identity and independence.