Roanoke

In the spring of 1585, seven English ships sailed around Cape Feare and up the windswept coast of Florida. Their mission: to gain a foothold in the Americas, a gateway to riches, an island fortress against the Spanish. But within ten years, the vibrant new colony had vanished without a trace.... In Hampton Court, Elizabeth is under siege--surrounded by sycophants, spies, and assassins who stalk her every move. Among those charged with protecting her is a tall, charismatic spy named Gabriel North...and when the queen's advisers persuade her to send ships to the Americas, North is given a job for which he is perfectly suited: to seduce Roanoke's Secota princess and gain information about a fabled treasure hidden in the wilderness.In Princess Naia, North meets a woman who bewitches him utterly--and he soon sees the dangerous deceptions from which his mission was born. As war and calamity crash down on Roanoke Island, Gabriel North becomes a wanted man in a desperate hunt that will lead back across the Atlantic--into a trap set by his enemies, and into a shocking act of treachery that swirls around Elizabeth herself....With the grace of a master storyteller, Margaret Lawrence brings to life a cast of brave hearts and blackguards, petty criminals and grand schemers, who play their roles in a searing drama of conquest, rule, and rebellion.From the Hardcover edition.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.