Norfolk Public Library Program and Book Signing - The Secret Token; Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

In 1587, 115 men, women and children arrived at Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina to establish the first English settlement in the New World. But when the new colony’s leader returned to Roanoke from a resupply mission three years later, the settlers had vanished, leaving behind a single clue —a “secret token” etched into a tree.

The colonists’ disappearance is America’s oldest unsolved mystery, consuming historians, archaeologists and amateur sleuths for more than four hundred years. In The Secret Token; Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke, author Andrew Lawler presents clues gathered at archaeological digs, in European archives and among the people living today in the Carolina swamps, bringing the reader a surprising answer to the old question of the colonists’ fate. Along the way he discovers that the story of the lost Elizabethans shines fresh light on the issues of race, gender, and immigration in present-day America.

Norfolk native Andrew Lawler is a freelance writer who has written more than a thousand articles for a dozen different magazines on topics ranging from asteroids to zebrafish. His research and interviews have taken him to more than two dozen countries.

The program will take place in the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Slover Library, 235 E. Plume Street, Norfolk 23510. FREE and open to the public.