Inagehi [Paperback]

There is little to recommend in Cady's slow yarn about a mountain defiled and the revenge it extracts on its owner. Trouble begins in Winston-Salem, N.C., in the 1950s when a 30-year-old Native American, Harriette Johnson, inherits 700 acres and "dark knowledge" about her father's murder. Though inagehi is a Cherokee term that means "a person who lives alone in the wilderness," Hariette is joined in her newly claimed cabin by Johnny Whitcomb, who helps her unravel the mystery. Unfortunately, the mystery is as slack as an old guitar string, and by the time it's solved, readers are beyond caring. Cady, author of the well-received The Sons of Noah and Other Stories , inexplicably lets a minor character tell Harriette's story, thereby depriving it of real emotional logic and immediacy (her romance with Whitcomb, for example, is rendered as an afterthought). The result is a colorless heroine with a passion for playing music at odd moments. Cady's stiff, writerly descriptions don't help--"The walking stick flashed yellowly in the sun, descending, metrical, like a conductor's baton measuring the slow beat of a Bach chorale." And stilted dialogue is made more awkward by such editorial comments as: " 'Civilizations die for a number of reasons and one of those reasons was responsible for the destruction of the American Indian.' " A (Joseph) Campbell soup mix of myth and legend that promises tension and doesn't deliver.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Set in North Carolina in 1957, Inagehi (Cherokee for a person living alone in the wilderness) presents the life of a young woman music teacher. Visiting the family lawyer after her mother's death, Harriette finds that she has inherited two things-wealth (700 acres of timberland and substantial money in savings and insurance) and a mystery. Seven years ago, Harriette believed that her father was killed in an accident; now she learns that he was murdered, executed by persons unknown. At the time of his death, the father had been clear-cutting the mountain, which in Cherokee terms indicates that he had already lost his soul. With the help of an unlikely group of friends (the white sheriff, her father's best friend, a retired history professor, and the old woman lived on the mountain), Harriette sets out to solve the murder and the larger mystery of why her father was acting as he was. Cady's novel should appeal to a wide range of readers. Let's hope the title won't cause them to leave it on the shelf.
Debbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati Technical Coll.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In the late 1950s, Harriette Johnson, a young Native American, returns home to Asheville, North Carolina, to settle affairs after her mother's death. Only then does she learn that her father, who died years before, was murdered, and his body was found on a patch of land that Harriette has just inherited. Although her attorney urges her to sell the land, calling it evil, Harriette begins a voyage of discovery that leads her not only to her father's murderers, but to an understanding of her heritage as a Cherokee and the nature of good and evil. Along the way, she meets and befriends some unusual characters: a retired history professor, an embittered sheriff, and Molla, an Inagehi, one who lives alone in the wilderness. Author Cady uses many layers of narrative, interweaving past and present with Cherokee history and lore, in this rich exploration of the connections that hold the world together. Harriette's pilgrimage, seen through the eyes of a young Cherokee, Janet Scott, is an evocative portrayal of a human being learning what can be heard when one understands the power of silence. Eloise Kinney

An introspective novel by the author of The Sons of Noah and Other Stories (1992, not reviewed), in which a Cherokee woman's examination of the circumstances surrounding her father's death leads to a flirtation with the dark side of Native American cosmology. In August 1957, Harriette Johnson returns to the North Carolina mountains of her girlhood to find an explanation of her father's death in 1950. Lawyer Judge Alan holds that Peter Lee, an elderly local, killed Harriette's father because he was mindlessly destroying the earth. The legal-minded local sheriff wants only to arrest Johnson's murderers. As Harriette continues her investigation, she finds further obstacles. On one occasion, she discovers a dead bird on the seat of her car, on another a dead snake wrapped around the vehicle's radio antenna. Research into her family history solidifies her belief that her father died at the hands of Nunnehi, thought by Native Americans to be part human and part spirit. Harriette's quest culminates in her viewing of a phantasmic reenactment of her father's murder by spirits. The sheriff explains afterwards that Judge Alan's father swindled Peter Lee by selling him worthless land, which Lee later sold to Harriette's father, who excavated the land for nonexistent minerals and was subsequently punished by his own people. Alan blames Lee for Johnson's death to deflect attention from his family's dishonesty. Cady has created a believable and resonant central character, and the Native Americans here are individuals, not stereotypes. The entire story is retold by a friend of Harriette's, however, a refraction that does the novel little good. Although it falters occasionally, Inagehi effects a taut blend of the mythical and emotional aspects of human life. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.