Howling Wolf, a Comanche warrior, watched his life's blood being pumped from his leg to the ground below. He applied pressure to the severed artery, but knew he would die within minutes. A terrible drought forces Jeb Hawkins and his family, as well as Shawnee Chief Grey Cloud and his tribe, from their land, and they guide you on a journey from Tennessee to the Colorado Territory. The trip is a long and dangerous journey where anything can happenand sometimes does.
“A work of extraordinary imagination and sympathy, a journey from slavery to the mountaintop, perfectly realized.” —Ken Burns, American filmmaker Born on Emancipation Day, 1863, to a sharecropping family of black and Indian blood, Elijah Yancy never lived as a slave—but his self–image as a free person is at war with his surroundings: Spartanburg, South Carolina, in the Reconstructed South. Exiled for his own survival as a teenager, Elijah walks west to the Nebraska plains—and, like other rootless young African–American men of that era, joins up with the US cavalry. The trajectory of Elijah’s army career parallels the nation’s imperial adventures in the late 19th century: subduing Native Americans in the West, quelling rebellion in the Philippines. Haunted by the terrors endured by black Americans and by his part in persecuting other people of color, Elijah is sustained only by visions, memories, prayers, and his questing spirit—which ultimately finds a home when his troop is posted to the newly created Yosemite National Park in 1903. Here, living with little beyond mountain light, running water, campfires, and stars, he becomes a man who owns himself completely, while knowing he’s left pieces of himself scattered along his life’s path like pebbles on a creek bed. “Seen through the fresh eyes of buffalo soldier Elijah Yancy, Yosemite is Gloryland, his true home. Shelton Johnson has written a beautiful novel about Elijah’s journey.” —Maxine Hong Kingston, author of China Men and The Woman Warrior
The Blackburns' improbable journey from bondage to freedom pulsates with the breath-catching urgency of a thriller, yet this remarkable story is true . . . An invaluable testament to resistance, resilience, and a once-denied but unalienable right to life and liberty.--Rene Graham, "The Boston Globe."
Miami in the 1920’s is a city with two faces. By day, it’s a dazzling beacon of industry; when the sun goes down, neon signs flash and decadence reigns. As Prohibition takes hold, speakeasies and illicit distilleries spring up alongside lavish mansions. Nothing can slow the influx of tourists thirsty for strong liquor—or quell the greed of those eager to provide it. Caught between these two worlds, and two very different men, beautiful Lily Strickland throws herself into re-building her grandparents’ Art Deco hotel while reveling in everything the city’s nightlife has to offer a blonde-bombshell flapper. When her shy, unassuming sister is caught up in Miami’s vicious mob underworld, Lily turns to the doctor she’s loved for years. But it may be up to a young pilot and former rumrunner to save her sister and salvage the legacy her family has worked so hard to build.
In the earliest days of the last century, a Florida family strives to build a legacy in the burgeoning new city of Miami . . . In South Florida, a region that offers some of life’s richest beauty as well as some of its harshest conditions, a city is rising. Eve and Max Harjo moved to Miami after the great freeze of 1894 wiped out their citrus grove. Eve is busy writing for the Miami Metropolis, Miami’s first newspaper, while Max salvages the ships that fall victim to Florida’s dangerous reefs and violent storms. Their nineteen-year-old daughter Eliza dives to bring up the salvaged treasures, uncaring that it is hardly woman’s work. And her stubborn determination to educate local Seminoles—male and female—draws the ire of the tribe’s chief. But Eliza’s greatest conflict will be choosing between two men: a brilliant inventor working on the prototype for a new motorboat, and a handsome lighthouse keeper from the northwest. When a massive storm unleashes its fury on South Florida, it reveals people’s truest characters and deepest secrets, changing lives as drastically as it changes the coastal landscape . . .
In turn-of-the-century Florida, a family comes of age, and a daughter finds her destiny entwined with a land as full of promise as it is danger. The steamy, sweltering banks of Florida’s Ocklawaha River don’t look much like Glory Land to young Eve Stewart, despite her father’s proclamation. But it’s here that Eve, her three siblings, and their parents will settle in July, 1875. Within a few years, Eve’s father, Hap, has made good on his assurances. They have a large, weathered clapboard house and a comfortable life, thanks to Hap’s job on a steamboat. Eve and her twin sister, Ivy, are blossoming into young women. Yet as Ivy grows more involved in medicine making under the tutelage of a neighboring black woman, her path leads away from the family. Eve, an aspiring writer, loves her home though she longs to see the wider world beyond its swamps and shores. But when she discovers a secret Ivy’s been keeping, Eve must decide between protecting the family name or saving her sister. With the help of a half-Creek Indian tracker, Max Harjo, Eve sets out to find Ivy, beginning a journey that will dare her to follow her ambitions and her passion wherever they lead.
This groundbreaking collection of essays shows how the American Western has been reimagined in different national contexts, producing fictions that interrogate, reframe, and remix the genre in unexpectedly critical ways.
