There’s some good stuff here and I think you need to be in the frame of mind to read and catch it. Johnny Rolfe and Pocahontas are finally text-messaging and it brings in yet another form of communicating story that Sharpe uses skillfully.
Here Johnny is telling Pocahontas about the meeting of the group in a wary celebration:
So I would caution you as a fledgling director of environmental theater to be aware of how much more interactive a performance can get than you might have intended when your audience is a group of frightened, half-starved travelers from a land where parody is chiefly used to wound and kill. And I know you were dressed–or not dressed–to look like the men of your town, but beautiful, topless girls running a circle around a group of love-starved men will cause the sort of open-mouthed, drool-lipped catatonia you witnessed, followed by the violent open-armed lunges at you my guys made. (p. 212)
Johnny is so proper; his attempts at conversation are attempts at eloquence. This to a girl who is as open and blunt with her own language, though it may be that he sees her cunning and intelligence. A bit later, he reveals his own outlook on mankind:
Nothing since the start of time has stopped men from killing each other. Art, though sometimes nice, has always been perfectly useless against war. (p. 213)
Is the violence we see not only of one tribe towards another, but within the groups as the carelessly shoot, punch, beat each other without regret a statement that this one trait remains strongest and endures? Surely this focus on the hope of young love based on the original tale of Jamestown is also a statement of what survives in lesser degree in times of horror and devastation, but will eventually grow to overcome whatever was done in the name of survival.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology