A portrait of a remarkable woman who played an outsize role in Cherokee and early American history.
The first book in a two-part historical fiction series about Sarah Ridge Paschal Pix, a woman from a prominent Cherokee family in the 19th century.
Ridge Paschal Pix was born in what is now west Georgia to Major Ridge, a prominent leader of the Cherokee Nation, and his wife Susanna. When the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Removal Bill of 1830, Ridge and his family became convinced that removal west was the only way to protect their people from the violent incursions of Georgian settlers. Sarah’s father, Major Ridge, and her brother, John Ridge, were among the Cherokee people who signed the Treaty of New Echota of 1835, which Cherokee leaders, such as John Ross, deemed a betrayal. Sarah and her new husband, George Paschal, joined her family on their journey to Arkansas along the route that would later be called the Trail of Tears. When John Ross’ party arrived, they blamed the Ridges and the Treaty Party for their losses and assassinated Sarah’s father, brother, and cousin. Well-educated and decisive, Sarah took on the role of family matriarch, intent on avenging her fallen kin, while managing her own household amid a frequently fractious marriage. This novel covers her life up to 1848; an upcoming sequel will cover the second half. In her historical novel, Webb blurs fact and fiction, animating the subject and era. The first half of Sarah’s life, which this book depicts, occurs during the most tumultuous and tragic chapter of Cherokee history. The author thoroughly limns the years of politics and strife to better contextualize Sarah’s narrative, and she includes many passages of Sarah speaking in first-person: “When John Ross gained the doorway I stepped forward as if to shake his hand. Did I see fear in his eyes? I pulled from my sleeve a thorny rose. I looked straight into his face and softly said as I had on his rose-covered porch, ‘Your arrogance killed my family and our people!’” For the most part, this is done well, but the result often reads like nonfiction, without the intimacy of a fully realized protagonist. Still, for such an important period of history often overlooked in historical fiction, this is a welcome addition.
A portrait of a remarkable woman who played an outsize role in Cherokee and early American history.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9798989609802
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Crimson Peony Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A frank and open-minded account from Flemish journalist Joris of her venture into Zaire, formerly called the Congo, the infamous inspiration for Conrad's Heart of Darkness. As a child, Joris heard the tales told by her uncle, a Belgian missionary serving in the Congo. His visits were family milestones and the curios and gifts he sent back to Belgium became treasured heirlooms. But Joris the adult journalist wanted not only to follow in her uncle's footsteps but to see for herself what contemporary Zaire was like. A subtext here is a retrospective look at Belgian colonialism, notorious for its tragic failure to prepare the Congolese for independence, which, when it occurred, resulted in immediate chaos that led to the subsequent rise of Mobutu Sese Seko (president since 1965) and the ``Barons,'' who have brazenly used the country's great mineral wealth to enrich themselves. Joris first visits her uncle's old mission postings, where she meets his now-aging colleagues and learns that the Church is still one of the few ways out of poverty for bright young men, though many local churches and schools are closed down for lack of money. This poverty is a common theme of Congolese life, Joris learns, as she balances encounters with white expatriates with an excursion on the aging steamer that plies the Congo River from Kinshasa to Kisangani; a visit to Gbadolite, Mobutu's own Versailles; a trip to the southern mining province of Shaba, which in 1977 rebelled against Mobutu; and, on the lighter side but no less instructive, evenings in Maton, the famous entertainment district of Kinshasa. A deliberately impressionistic rather than definitive account, with Joris's perceptive insights and palpable sympathies for a long-suffering people making it more than just another travel book.
Pub Date: Oct. 13, 1992
ISBN: 0-689-12164-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
The rigors of Irish monasticism in the medieval period, well told by travel writer Moorhouse (On the Other Side, 1991; Hell's Foundations, 1992; etc.). The first half of the book is an imaginative reconstruction of life in an Irish monastery on the secluded rock-island of Skellig Michael from its founding in 588 to its dissolution in 1222. Moorhouse uses fictional vignettes to enliven the text. Each chapter is a well-chosen window onto a significant figure or event in the monastery's history—an 824 attack by Viking raiders, for example. In these fictional glimpses, we see the larger picture of Irish monasticism's evolution from a rigorously austere island faith to a less zealous, Romanized religion. Skellig Michael, perilously located on a sheer cliff rising from the ocean, began as one of the most ascetic of the Irish monasteries. Gradually, however, the population of monks began to dwindle, and the last fictionalized chapter shows the abbot and his aging disciples rowing their way back to the security of the mainland. The first half of the book is so intriguing and beautifully written that the second, a more traditional historical treatment of Irish monasticism, arranged topically, pales by comparison. Some of the discussions are absorbing, though; in one instance, Moorhouse explores the theme of syncretism, arguing that early Irish Catholicism, rather than eradicating pagan Celtic rituals, incorporated them into monastic life. This eclectic borrowing was able to continue for centuries because of Ireland's geographical remoteness from the centralizing forces of Rome. Due to accommodation with a Celtic spring ritual, Easter was dated differently than in Rome, a discrepancy that continued until Rome demanded conformity in the early 8th century. An uneven work, then, more fascinating in its first, fictionalized half than in the rigorous explications of the second, and one that might have worked better presented purely as a novel. (illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-15-100277-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
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