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Filled with Fortitude

Pilgrim Elizabeth Tilley
By: Sally Hobert Whiting

Filled with Fortitude brings to life the remarkable journey of Elizabeth Tilley, a young Mayflower passenger whose courage, faith, and resilience helped shape the future of a new world.

Richly researched and vividly imagined, this historical novel follows Elizabeth through the challenges of the Atlantic crossing and the hardships of early Plymouth Colony, offering readers an unforgettable glimpse into one girl’s determination to persevere against extraordinary odds.

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Reviews

Attention All Descendants of Elizabeth Tilley & John Howland!

And all who are interested in the Pilgrim story

You have got to read this book! Share it with your children and grandchildren. It would be a wonderful Thanksgiving or Christmas gift.

Filled With Fortitude: Pilgrim Elizabeth Tilley, by Tilley/Howland descendant Sally Hobert Whiting, is a valuable read. Starting at age 76, Sally spent six years reading, researching and writing this book. It is worth every minute she spent. 

While we all know the story of the Mayflower and its passengers, facts, figures and dates, we donʻt know much about it from a womanʻs point of view. In fact, we donʻt even know the first or last names of some of the female passengers! 

Filled With Fortitude is an historical-fiction account of the Mayflower story told through the eyes of 13-year-old passenger, Elizabeth Tilley. It begins with the Tilley family boarding the Mayflower and follows the travails of the voyage, including John Howland falling overboard and getting rescued, the arrival at Cape Cod and Plymouth Harbor, the loss of Elizabethʻs parents and aunt and uncle, her decision to remain in Plymouth and the first Thanksgiving, her marriage to John Howland and much more. It ends with the birth of the seventh of their ten children and their settlement at Rocky Nook, a place dear to the hearts of all Tilley/Howland descendants. 

Elizabeth and her family interact with many of the passengers whose names we are familiar with. It speculates on the close friendships with fellow teenage girls Constance Hopkins and Mary Chilton, which last through their adulthood. 

While we do not know, and cannot know, exactly what transpired in the personal relations between the passengers on the Mayflower and in Plymouth Colony, Sally’s research makes what is described on the pages of this book entirely plausible. She has truly brought the story and its inhabitants to life. I highly recommend it to descendants of all the passengers on that incredible journey.

                                                            Review by Lynda Hylander

                                                            Past Governor, Hawaii Mayflower Society

                                                            Public Relations Chair, Arizona Mayflower Society

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Review Published in Howland Quarterly, September 2025

By Sally Hobert Whiting
Historical Fiction • AuthorHouse, 2025
Reviewed by Bruce D. Harrington

For those who count Elizabeth Tilley and John Howland among their ancestors, the arc of Elizabeth’s life is familiar: her voyage on the Mayflower as a young girl, the loss of both parents during the first winter, and her marriage to John Howland forming a union from which so many descend. What Sally Hobert Whiting offers in Filled with Fortitude is not a restating of that record, but an imaginative meditation on what Elizabeth might have felt and experienced in those pivotal, formative years.

Published in 2025 by AuthorHouse, the novel draws from the “bones” of primary sources—William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, Edward Winslow’s Mourt’s Relation, and other contemporaneous writings—as well as from the insights of respected historians and scholars who have shaped an understanding of Elizabeth’s world. On that foundation, Whiting constructs a tender and introspective narrative, offering readers an emotional window into the lived experience of a young girl coming of age amid hardship and transformation.

Scenes such as Elizabeth recalling her father’s “dark brown eyes, an exact match to her own,” give the story a sense of inheritance—a reminder that personal identity, memory, and resilience are carried quietly from one generation to the next. One of the novel’s most poignant threads is the shrinking of Elizabeth’s “relationship circle” as she endures repeated loss. At the same time, the steady arrival of newcomers—many of whom had not suffered the same early trials—reshapes her community, creating a complex balance of joy with new bonds and grief for those lost. Through it all, Whiting suggests a quiet faith that sustains Elizabeth—not loudly or dramatically, but with dignity and inner strength.

While some of the imagined scenes and internal reflections lean toward the inventive or speculative, they are always offered with reverence and restraint. This book is best appreciated by readers who are already familiar with the Pilgrims’ complex story as preserved in the primary sources. In that context, Whiting’s narrative becomes a companion piece—layering emotion, possibility, and depth onto the historical record, and helping us reflect on what life might have been like for Elizabeth as a daughter, orphan, wife, and foremother.

Filled with Fortitude is a welcome addition to the growing body of historical fiction centered on Mayflower women. For descendants and students of history alike, it offers not just a recounting of events, but an invitation to imagine the heart behind them.

                                                            Review by Bruce D. Harrington

                                                            Past Governor, Washington Society of Mayflower Descendants

                                                            Director of Education and Curriculum at Beyond 1620