Esther Wheelwright (1696-1780) embodies the imperial conquest of North America like no other eighteenth-century figure: born and raised to age seven in a New England garrison town, she was taken in wartime by the Wabanaki in 1703 and taught to pray as a Catholic and to live like a native girl. At age twelve, she was enrolled in the Ursuline convent school as a student, where she would remain for the rest of her life as a choir nun, eventually becoming the first and only foreign-born Mother Superior of the order.

Hers was an utterly exceptional life, not just because she lived in all three major North American cultures in the colonial northeast. Her progress from Puritan girlhood to Wabanaki Catholicism and survivor of wartime trauma to become the head of a very status-conscious Catholic women’s community is exceptional and inspirational. But because she ended up on the losing French side of the Seven Years’ War, her story has largely been forgotten by English-speaking U.S. Americans and Canadians.

Combining the insights of ethnohistory, environmental history, and material culture, Ann Little follows Esther Wheelwright on her many border-crossings. Through Esther’s life, she reveals the hidden histories of the different communities of New England, Wabanaki, and French Canadian women. Their labor and prayers tell a story of the volatile northeastern borderlands like no other.