1586, Dasamonquepeuc, the Secotan Country.  Dawn crept across the shallow bay and over the sandy beach with the silence of death, for death was coming. Pemisapan, the Secotan leader, must have known this. Surely he expected it. How could he not? For a year, English troops had been in his country and death had followed them from town to town. The old men, who knew all about evil windigos—monster beings—understood at once that English commander Ralph Lane was one of them. He was not human; his brutality proved it. The autumn, too, had been frightening, for the worst drought in eight hundred years had come in with the English. Corn withered, leaving only wild roots for the Secotan to dig—tasteless things, of the kind eaten only to survive. Lane didn't plant and he didn't gather. Instead, he built a fort on Roanoke Island, seized flour and seed corn from the Secotan, ate their pet dogs that strayed into the fort, kidnapped the son of a neighboring chief, abused the boy's crippled father, and shot anyone who resisted.

The year was a year of horror. Lane came to Roanoke: demanding, taking, killing. 

How different it had been before...

The lost colony of Roanoke is one of America's oldest and most intriguing historical mysteries.  

What makes this book unique is that every clue furnished by primary documents is treated as evidence and you are the detective. The three questions essential to solving the mystery are:

• Why were the lost colonists lost?
• Where did the lost colonists go?
• Why were the lost colonists never recovered?

The answers come from the clues the colonists themselves left, and are startling:

• The colonists were not lost because of bad luck or a shortage of food, but because they were sabotaged!
• The colonists did not go north to the Chesapeake Bay nor were they killed by the Powhatan as speculated.
• Jamestown dispatched search teams who found the colonists and consequently knew exactly where they were. Yet, officials pretended that all were dead and covered up the report of their survival.

This book explains why.

From the dust jacket