Encounters Unforeseen: 1492 Retold

by Andrew Rowen

After 525 years, the traditional literature recounting the history of Columbus's epic voyage and first encounters with Native Americans remains Eurocentric, focused principally--whether pro- or anti-Columbus--on Columbus and the European perspective. A historical novel, Encounters 1492 Retold now dramatizes these events from a bicultural perspective, fictionalizing the beliefs, thoughts, and actions of the Native Americans who met Columbus side by side with those of Columbus and other Europeans, all based on a close reading of Columbus's Journal, other primary sources, and anthropological studies.

The drama alternates among three TaIno chieftains--CaonabO, GuacanagarI, and Guarionex--and a TaIno youth Columbus captures, Spain's Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, and Columbus himself. It depicts the education, loves and marriages, and other life experiences each brought to the unforeseen encounters and then their astonishment, fears, and objectives in 1492 and 1493. The focus includes the TaIno "discovery" of Europe, when Columbus hauls the captive and other TaInos back to Spain, as well as the chieftains' reactions to the abusive garrison of seamen Columbus leaves behind in the Caribbean. Throughout, the TaIno protagonists are neither merely victims nor statistics, but personalities and actors comparable to the European, and their side of the story is forcefully told.

The novel weaves a fascinating tapestry of scenes and dialogues from the historical record, often incorporating text from primary sources. Isabella plots her dynastic marriage, argues with Ferdinand over who's supreme, and wages war to expand their kingdoms. The chieftains take multiple wives to consolidate their rules, vie to marry the beautiful Anacaona, and battle Caribe raiders. An unknown Columbus conceives a fanciful voyage, marries advantageously to promote it, and yet suffers an agonizing decade of ridicule and rejection. GuacanagarI rescues Columbus when the Santa MarIa sinks, but CaonabO questions GuacanagarI's generosity, and Guarionex is vexed, having witnessed a religious prophecy of TaIno genocide inflicted by a "clothed people." Columbus teaches his captive Christianity, initiating the following centuries' collision of Christianity with Native American religion and spirits.

The TaIno stories depict both events known to have occurred (e.g., the chieftains' ascensions to power, the prophecy of genocide, the captive's baptism in Spain) and known practices or experiences (e.g., inter-island canoe travel, a hurricane, a Caribe wife raid, a batey game). The Isabella and Ferdinand stories include their establishment of the Inquisition, subjugation and Christianization of the Canary Islands, completion of the Reconquista, and expulsion of the Jews from Spain, illustrating European doctrines of conquest, enslavement, and involuntary conversion and how the sovereigns ruled over Old World peoples before encountering Native Americans. The Columbus stories portray his pre-1492 sailing experiences and the evolution of his world outlook, and his thoughts during the encounters embody the concepts underlying the European subjugation of Native Americans over the following centuries. Stark societal differences are illustrated, with the Europeans practicing African slavery and the TaInos sharing food as communal property.

A Sources section briefly discusses interpretations of historians and anthropologists contrary to the author's presentation, as well as issues of academic disagreement.

The result is a gripping, personal, documented, and bicultural portrayal of the voyage that reshaped the course of world history, written at its 525th anniversary.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, Anthropology, American History

572 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 6, 2017

About the author

Andrew Rowen’s novels retell the history of the encounters between European and Taíno peoples in the Caribbean from a bicultural perspective, based on primary sources, anthropological studies, and visits to sites where Columbus and Taíno chieftains lived, met, and fought. Encounters Unforeseen: 1492 Retold (2017) portrays the life stories of the chieftains and Columbus from youth through their first contacts in 1492 and was praised for historical accuracy. Columbus and Caonabó: 1493–1498 Retold (2021) relates the bitter war between Columbus and Chief Caonabó during the period of Columbus’s second voyage and was praised for scholarship. A third novel retelling the history from 1498 to 1502 will be released in November 2025. Andrew is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and Harvard Law School.

Reviews

[Amanda Hupe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to JKS Communications and the author for an opportunity to read this book!

Encounters Unforeseen 1492 Retold by Andrew Rowen is exactly that. 1492 Retold but with some added dramatization. The book begins in 1455 to give background to the Christopher Columbus journey. You get to read about his youth but also the political background of Isabella and Ferdinand. However, when Columbus lands, the book also goes to the perspective of the natives. Then the book ends in 1493, before the slaughter of the natives by Christopher Columbus.

So, everyone knows the story of Christopher Columbus. In America, he even has a holiday…why??? I have no idea. I have never liked the fact that we have a holiday celebrating a man who slaughtered natives for his own political gain. I mean Lief Erickson landed in North America long before Christopher Columbus anyway. I have a degree in history. So in elementary school, I got the typical teaching of the greatness and perseverance of the Christopher Columbus journey. Then in college, I studied the real history of Christopher Columbus.

I was hoping this book would bring something new to the table. Unfortunately, it didn’t. The author tried not to take a side politically. He tried to show all points of view. It felt like the same information just rehashed in a new format. So this did not feel like a novel for me. It felt like a history book with a little dialogue. I appreciate all the history and research that was obviously done. It is an incredible amount of research. However, while reading the book, it was like the book didn’t know where it fell in regards to the genre. There is no development or characterization. There is a lot of historical detail. I think this book would have made a great historical nonfiction book instead.

I do applaud the author for the momentous amount of research he did. I rate this book 3 out of 5 stars

[J.D. DeHart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rowen's book clearly displays the labor of research he has invested in this text. Informative, learned, and gripping as a literary work.

There are copious references here, a glossary, and an author's voice at work in sharing this story with us. I would recommend this book as one for lovers of fiction and history. It reads like a well-written ethnographic study.

[Cherei · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delightful, historical account of the REAL story of Columbus's journey to the new world in 1492. I love that, 'Encounters Unforeseen: 1492 Retold' finally gives the human story of the interaction between the Europeans as well as the Tainos perspective. The author depicts all of the men and women as real people. All were taken off of the pedestal. They had their good sides.. they had their "bad" side. They all had wants, desires, and destinies that made them all human.

I truly enjoyed reading Encounters Unforeseen! It's a book that I encourage the reader to slowly savor and reflect as they read. We've been fed so much BS over the years.. that it's difficult to see Columbus as an unknown.. who just wanted funding to travel. Basically.. the same dream, most humans still have in today's world. :) I'd love to see the author have a special cruise set up.. so, that the readers can journey in the footsteps of all of the places he traveled to research this magnificent factual account of Columbus's travels. As well as the travels of the Tainos who traveled back with Columbus to "discover" Europe! Hey.. they were real people too.. and don't think they didn't lust after the same dreams of Columbus.

I easily see this novel becoming a must read in American history classes from junior high to graduate level. It only took 525 years to get what is probably the best recorded historical account that gives the full bi-cultural perspective. Well worth the money.. well worth the time to savor and devour! Enjoy, as I know, I certainly did! :)

[Marissa DeCuir · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating work, and a fiercely researched rebuttal of the one-sided, often grossly inaccurate version of Christopher Columbus' journey that you probably learned in your American History class.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The sea has protected our people from whatever lies beyond.”

A monumental effort. Deep historical research marred by modern, irrelevant speculation. The depth and detail Rowen attempts leads to so many narrative threads and point-of-view characters (often hopping from one head to another mid-paragraph) that keeping track is a challenge. Too much exposition disguised as narrative. Slow going, but worth the effort.

“The bones of the dead are food for the living.”

A strong point is the evenhanded depiction of the varied beliefs, even when the thoughts or actions seem reprehensible to modern sensitivities. Rowen doesn’t shy away from getting into the head of people. Armed with detailed diaries of Columbus and Queen Isabella, he is more imaginative with the natives of the new world, though he has sources for them too. Seventy pages of appendices.

“These men are of a brutish and incredibly powerful tribe, where force prevails over conscience.”
Using four different names for Columbus may have been geographically correct, but it was occasionally confusing.

“[Columbus] was overpowered by the recognition that there was no essential difference between these conquered [and enslaved] peoples--commoners--and himself.”

Illustrations by Robert Hunt. Nice clouds on the dust cover, but the ships look awkward.

“He found a priest and confessed his sins, particularly of frequently believing the voyage and discovery were his achievements alone rather than those of the Lord.”

[Julie Locascio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, I'm amazed at the 4-star and 5-star reviews of this "historical novel"--which reads like 70% history, 25% psychological speculation, and only 5% novel. Don't get me wrong: I love studying history. People whose reviews consist of gushing over the amount of research the author put in are completely neglecting the fact that he CHOSE to use that research to write a novel, not a history book, and it's barely a novel at all. Apparently as a retired attorney, he felt unqualified to publish a book of history, so he chose to write a "novel", but, to me, it just doesn't work. For one thing, there are far too many characters (I say this as someone whose favorite novel is "War and Peace"!), and the Caribbean characters do not have distinct enough personalities to track them against the completely unfamiliar names used for places we modern readers know as the Bahamas, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Cuba. (For the entire novel, I thought "Bohio" was referring to Puerto Rico--which, as it turns out, was never in the novel--that's how confused I was.) (Incidentally, I did read this on Kindle, so I was probably hampered by not being able to see the maps given.) For another thing, his treatment of the Catholic faith appeared to be his own speculation about how Columbus and Iberians went through mental contortions to reconcile their Christianity with their brutality against non-Catholics. I could just as easily speculate their mindset myself as being hypocritical, corrupted by power, corrupted by money, or even just phony, but my speculation is simply that. His efforts to imagine these characters as having genuine but convoluted Christian beliefs leaves them all having bizarre internal dialogues which simply do not succeed as fleshing them out as believable characters. He does accurately point out that Africans, Ottomans, Arabs, Greeks, Italians, AND Caribbeans were all taking slaves, so it is that much more belabored that he spends so much time on Columbus, Isabella, Ferdinand, and King John's speculated religious beliefs to come up with his own theory of how they reconciled Catholicism with brutal slavery (not to mention the expulsion of Jews and theft of their property). The author's efforts to speculate these internal beliefs, for me, is just too belabored to produce characters with authentic internal dialogues. Thus they never rise to the level of fictional characters--they remain historic figures with superimposed psychological speculations, and this reader just could not get immersed emotionally at all (except for the enslaved Caribbeans who actually WERE fictional characters!). This is a very ambitious novel, and you will certainly learn a lot historically, but I do wish that the author had spent more time researching how to write a NOVEL.

[Toby Newton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A worthy and well-intentioned book, but it falls between two - or three - stools. It's not quite "history" because there is an attempt at fictional storytelling that exceeds the boundaries of 'factuality'. It's very definitely not a novel, because the story-telling is minimal and tangled up in baggy skeins of history. And it doesn't do what it purports to set out to do, which is provide a different narrative from the perspective of the "natives", because the motivations of the indigenous people are very sketchily examined and end up not really convincing one way or another. Why did the people of these islands tolerate the behaviour of the rapacious, ignorant, contemptuous Europeans? There needed to be more (albeit speculative) psychological insight for that question to spark to life. That said, it's a hard nut to crack; perhaps an impossible one.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not the Kindle Edition, but I have given up from trying to change this to the hard book version, of which I revived as a Goodreads win.

Received this book as a Goodreads Win. Thank you. Beautiful hard cover book by Andrew Rowen.

This book tells the story of how Columbus grew up and tried to find India and China and failed. Instead he found the Caribbean Islands and called the natives Indians. Along the way, he married, fathered two children, in and out of wedlock, and tried to get Portugal and Spain to pay for his ventures. Spain finally gave him three ships, he promised treasurers he failed to bring. He did however bring disease to the Native peoples, and intended to bring his brand of Christ to his so called heathens. This is the story of Columbus that has not been told and of the trash sailors he left behind in the islands. It is well written, and has a great Glossary, list of sources and pages of acknowledgements, as well as many maps and illustrations. The author brings a great history story to the reader of a Columbus full of pride and arrogance.

Columbus, was however, a good explorer, even if he had not a clue of what he was discovering. The only problem being, the Natives were not lost, and were better off not being discovered by Columbus! The Author leaves us with Columbus getting his ships ready to go back to the islands to see how the men have fared who he left behind. They, in his absence have fought between themselves, become lazy, stealing from the natives, and raping their women. It is a wonder everyone of them have not been killed!

Hopefully the author does a follow up on voyage number two. I found this book very interesting, took me a while to read, as I would constantly have to refer to an Atlas to figure out where the sailors were, and what islands they were on. I found the Glossary of Taino words a boon as I read the book.

[Lance · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up thinking maybe it was an update of the excellent books 1492 and 1493 but this is entirely different. Rowen does a great job of putting us in the world of the Europeans and the Tainos to help us understand a bit about what the initial contact must have been like.
Rowen covers the history up to the point where Columbus is preparing for his second voyage.
The book definitely left me wanting to know more about all the historical characters. Given that there is not epilogue, I am hoping he will do a sequel.
*Maybe spoilers*
At the point he leaves off, Columbus is still in Spain, a large share of his initial crew is still on Haiti making a mess of things, and the Tainos still feel they have some control over their future.

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I nearly passed on this book feeling I'd had my fill of Columbus and his journeys and the off and on holiday in his honor. Then I read the description and noted it also contained the POV of the Tainos! That reeled me right in. The book is well researched and referenced, so I am gathering it is far more accurate than many of the accounts I've found. Sadly, the encounter wasn't very positive for the Tainos, or any of the American natives. And I am aware of the Native American views of the colonists and pioneers. The Tainos, were pretty well finished once Columbus arrived. It's good that someone has given them a voice. I do hope there will be a second book. Great read for fiction or history lovers.

I received a Kindle arc from Netgalley in exchange for a fair review.

[Angelle Barbazon · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Encounters Unforeseen" is an engrossing historical novel that takes you back in time 525 years when Christopher Columbus set sail on a journey that would shape the way we see the world for centuries to come. Many of us have grown up hearing stories of this legendary explorer, but rarely have people seen him through the eyes of the Native Americans he met and enslaved when he arrived in the New World. The heart of Andrew Rowen's novel is its outstanding ability to provide a bicultural perspective and, though it is a work of fiction, his close attention to historical detail is impeccable. This is a remarkable book!

[Andrew Alkema · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was unlike any history book I've read. It was a perfectly done mix of history book and historical fiction. I knew a lot of the details of the Columbus story, but "1492 Retold" is a very accurate subtitle. The Taino people changed from nameless, faceless people to characters I cared a lot about. This book changed how I think about Columbus's "discovery". I'd recommend this book to anyone, not just people who enjoy history books.

[Ellen Whitfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a cool book -- you can tell how much research the author put into it, and it's so imaginative at the same time! It gives a new perspective on such an important time in US history and gave me a lot to think about. History lovers and historical fiction readers will both enjoy this compelling read.

[Philipa Coughlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent historical novel written with detailed research by the author alongside some wonderful maps and resources of the time that are added to the text.
I knew very little about Columbus but the book gives an insight into his childhood in Genoa, the Taino tribes that he meets on his travels and the development of the reign of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand.
Well worth a read.

[Sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

First I would like to state that I received this book through the Goodreads giveaway in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank the author for giving me this opportunity and honor in being able to read this book. When I received this book I began reading it at once. I really enjoy the authors writing style. A most interesting read

[Mary]

Thi

[robert e. rayunas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time then now

History of the time gave one a sense of being there. Understanding what the locals were about. One could feel that u
Were talking to the natives.

[Alison O'Donnell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads like a text book trying to be a novel. Too tedious, unfortunately.

[Courtney Halverson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I started this book and could not finish it. It was reading too much like a textbook from school. There is nothing wrong with that just not my preferred style.

[Maya · Rating 2 out of 5]

2/5 stars.

Still confused as to wether it's a novel or a piece of non-fiction. Not sure the author knows either.

Rowen has evidently made a lot of research, but what he does with it... well, it's not much. It is a poorly executed ambitious book.

It is advertised as a novel but it only starts reading as a novel in the second half (for a 500 pages book) and, at that point, I just wasn't paying attention anymore.

Also, Rowen did Juan de la Cosa dirty and for that, he lost all credit.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very Interesting

I really enjoyed this book and recognize this was quite an undertaking for the author. I was engaged with the narrative from start to finish.

[Beau · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helped me with a university paper so 🤷‍♀️

[J. R. Floyd]

Took me a long time to complete. It was worth every page. Great history narrative.

[Kitty Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

This retelling of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America offers a previously unexplored examination of the perspectives of both the conquerors and the conquered.

Rowen shares his extensively documented sources from the European cultures as well as that available anthropologically from the indigenous cultures involved. His fictional characters and accounts are reasonably depicted combining his research with "human nature."

Although it is a historical fiction novel, it offers a far more likely historical account of Columbus's "discovery of America" than the fictional account in American history books.

[Peter Schindler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book maintained a balanced perspective between the views and impacts of both the exploring Europeans and the native Taino people. It was clear that the author did some deep research on the indigenous peoples of the early Americas, and his view of 15th century European imperialism was useful to put into context why things occurred as they did in those times. I especially liked the ending in which the Taino chieftain wonders to himself if his life will ever be the same with these pale settlers. It's obvious that he, as we the readers, knew the answer.

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant look into history (though fictional), Encounters Unforeseen presents what's often overlooked in history books. The little things that ultimately impact the larger parts of history. Cannot recommend enough.