Beulah Quintet

Prisons follows the coming-of-age of Johnny Church from English youngster to dashing Oxford adolescent to idealistic Puritan in the service of Cromwell's Parliamentary Army. Throughout his evolution Johnny seeks emancipation from a multitude of emotional, political, and religious prisons, not realizing that with each successive grasp at freedom, he escapes one form of captivity only to be confined by another. Johnny's journey ends in a prison of stone and mortar where, after questioning Cromwell's restrictions on personal freedoms, he is executed. Based on a true incident of the English Civil War, Prisons captures the promise and tragedy of the conflict that led to the first substantial migration to North America.

O Beulah Land, the second volume of The Beulah Quintet- Mary Lee Settle's unforgettable generational saga about the roots of American culture, class, and identity and the meaning of freedom-is a land-hungry story. It follows the odyssey of Johnny Church's descendants as they leave England in search of freedom and land. One of those descendants, Jonathan Lacey, settles in the backcountry of Virginia, where he battles both Native Americans and white frontier bandits and builds the beginning of a flourishing estate named Beulah. The novel closes shortly before the commencement of the Revolutionary War, with Lacey elected to the House of Burgesses and his family line firmly established in what is to become the state of West Virginia.