One Small Candle…book review

by Richard Subber | Jun 23, 2026 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History

upright folks made the start

Book review:

One Small Candle

by Thomas J. Fleming (1927-2017)

New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1964

222 pages

Wow! One Small Candle is a satisfyingly readable, confidently written, fully researched book about the terrifyingly precarious lives of the Mayflower crew and passengers in 1620. You didn’t want to be there. So many of them died at sea or too soon after they landed at Plymouth Bay.

Fleming just tells it like it was. For long times, they had too little food and drink, couldn’t wash, couldn’t change their clothes , and watched their sick family members and friends die because nothing could be done to help them.

Think about living for weeks in a small house with unthinkably low ceilings and no bathrooms and 100 other people. Even if you like the other people, that ain’t fun.

I don’t want to gloss over this part: Fleming makes the common mistake of calling the native inhabitants “savages.” They weren’t “savages.” They weren’t Europeans, of course. They were among millions who lived in and civilized North America for thousands of years before the Europeans “discovered” it.

They Mayflower passengers were an upright mix of dedicated religious folk and mostly hearty adventurers. Many of them gave their lives in their quest to build new lives at Plymouth. They struggled mightily to light one small candle, and sometimes they happily sang around the candle. Their candle burns still, and we have to be careful that we don’t snuff it out.

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Book review: The Sea Runners

…it informs, it does not soar…

by Ivan Doig

click here

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many waters: more poems with 53 free verse poems,

and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)

and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”