Philbrick opens his narrative by acknowledging that people always want to know how things begin. Beginnings are important markers in history, but they are also vague. Philbrick contends that beginnings are often not as clear-cut as people expect them to be. For Philbrick, the story of the Mayflower, and the subsequent “beginning” of New England, is one of those instances where the beginning is not as clear as people would like it to be. Philbrick begins with what most people know: that the Mayflower set sail in 1620 for the New World. The Pilgrims fled Europe to seek a place they might worship freely. Upon landing at Plymouth Rock, they established the Mayflower Compact. The Pilgrims then established a mutually beneficial relationship with the local Native population, the Wampanoags, and had a happy and bountiful first Thanksgiving. This, according to Philbrick, is the accepted narrative of the Mayflower.

Philbrick felt that there was more to the story of the Mayflower. Through his research, he discovered that the first fifty years or so of the Pilgrims’ time in the New World was far more complex than most people realized. The Pilgrims did manage to live in relative “peace” with their Native American neighbors, but a tragic war—King Philip’s War—later erupted.