Okay, so Charlotte Gordon and I are now charter members of each other's fan clubs, which is a thrilling novelty for me. Not that I haven't met writers who turned out to be good friends, but Charlotte (who was one of the visiting teachers at the Frost Place) and I hit it off instantly, in large part because of our shared urgency to deal with the seventeenth century in ways that speak fervently to the present.

I am in the midst of reading Charlotte's biography Mistress Bradstreet, and already I see how clearly she is focusing on one aspect of the Puritans we have forgotten: their erudition. Today we tend to associate anti-intellectualism with conservative Protestantism. But Milton and Bradstreet were more than extraordinarily intelligent; both were wide-ranging, voracious, and scholarly readers. Bradstreet is the miracle because of her sex; Milton is the miracle because of his language.

It's so exciting to find another mind focusing on such discoveries. I'm really, really happy to have met Charlotte. Not to mention that she also gave Tracing Paradise its very first Goodreads review.