Two Troubled Souls - by Aaron Spencer Fogleman (Paperback)

About the Book

Two Troubled Souls: An Eighteenth-Century Couple's Spiritual Journey in the Atlantic World

Book Synopsis

Jean-Francois Reynier, a French Swiss Huguenot, and his wife, Maria Barbara Knoll, a Lutheran from the German territories, crossed the Atlantic several times and lived among Protestants, Jews, African slaves, and Native Americans from Suriname to New York and many places in between. While they preached to and doctored many Atlantic peoples in religious missions, revivals, and communal experiments, they encountered scandals, bouts of madness, and other turmoil, including within their own marriage. Aaron Spencer Fogleman's riveting narrative offers a lens through which to better understand how individuals engaged with the eighteenth-century Atlantic world and how men and women experienced many of its important aspects differently.
Reynier's and Knoll's lives illuminate an underside of empire where religious radicals fought against church authority and each other to find and spread the truth; where Atlantic peoples had spiritual, medical, and linguistic encounters that authorities could not always understand or control; and where wives disobeyed husbands to seek their own truth and opportunity.

Review Quotes

A compelling, deeply researched, and accessibly written microhistory of one couple's journeys throughout the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.--William and Mary Quarterly

A rich microhistorical narrative.--Journal of American History

A well-told story that invites curiosity and reflection.--Georgia Historical Quarterly

An evocative and insightful microhistory that adds depth to our understanding of the integration of the Atlantic. . . . Recommended for anyone interested in early American and Caribbean history, and is essential reading for those who study interfaith and intercultural encounters in the early modern Atlantic world.--New West Indian Guide

An unusually revealing view of the transcontinental networks and radical thought and behavior in the tumultuous 18th-century Atlantic world. Recommended. All levels/libraries.--Choice

Anyone with an interest in the history of missions, the Atlantic world, the Moravians, or early American religious experiments will enjoy this book....This is careful scholarship written accessibly and with a biographer's skill for story.--Lutheran Quarterly

Exhaustively researched and beautifully written.--American Historical Review

Fogleman offers a lens through which to better understand how individuals engaged with the 18th century Atlantic World and how men and women experienced many of its important aspects differently.--NIU Today