The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, better known as the Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, was published in 1682 and became one of early America's first bestsellers. Written by Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan minister's wife, it recounts her roughly eleven-week captivity among Native Americans following their attack on Lancaster, Massachusetts, during King Philip's War in 1676. Structured as a series of "removes," the narrative describes her sufferings, the death of her youngest child, and her eventual ransom. Interpreting her ordeal through scripture and divine providence, the work helped establish the captivity narrative as a distinctly American literary genre.
