CHEROKEE ROSE

This second novel in Humphrey’s historical series tells a story of the travails of a part-Cherokee family in the 19th century as they endure the Trail of Tears.

The author follows up Cherokee Rock(2023) with a story that starts in the spring of 1838. A formerly enslaved person, Benjamin Waters, is a cotton planter in northwest Georgia, where he lives with his Cherokee wife and their daughters, Bella, Ella, and Lisa. Life-shattering changes are just around the corner for them all; Indigenous groups, including Cherokee people, are being forced off their ancestral lands in the state, and the U.S. government has already begun sending many of them west. To make matters worse, the Waters farm is attacked by outsiders, resulting in a tragedy that leaves two of the daughters to fend for themselves.They’re soon put into an internment camp, where conditions are brutal. Ella and Lisa are eventually forced to make a journey to unknown lands by incompetent and cruel members of the U.S. Army, including an Army scout named Tesali who has very recent history with the family. The journey west, which will come to be known as the Trail of Tears, is complicated by numerous challenges. Humphrey’s story aptly portrays the tragic human side of this forced migration, as well as the occasional legal maneuverings associated with it. The Waters sisters undergo wretched treatment (at the internment camp, for instance, guards throw corn at the imprisoned people as if they’re feeding chickens); meanwhile, the book intriguingly informs readers of how the government used official acts, such as the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, to make such dehumanizing policies possible. The inclusion of the mysterious, cold-blooded Tesali in the story also makes for a page-turning read. Some of the dialogue tends to state the obvious, as when a ferry owner’s wife tells members of the Waters family, “You folks have endured hard travel.” Still, as the journey unfolds, the narrative moves briskly from scene to terrible scene.

An unflinching and often engaging look at a shameful time in American history.