From Publishers Weekly
Through seven novels, most recently People of the Lightning, Gear (writing with Kathleen O'Neal Gear) has re-created the life of Native Americans of 2000 years ago. In his first solo hardcover, Gear moves ahead to 1825, intending, as he states in a foreword, to puncture current rosy "myths" about the Plains Indians. "The people of the Plains," Gear says, "took slaves, murdered women and children, committed genocide on their neighbors, and broke treaties." This is revisionist, pedagogical fiction, then, and the narrative shows it not only through its luxuriant detail but also through lengthy expository speeches that impede narrative flow. Gear's lens on the past is Richard Hamilton, a petulant Harvard philosophy student who's sent by his father on business to St. Louis. There, Richard loses his father's bankroll and is sold as an indentured servant, spinning him into an adventure up the Mississippi that brings him up against frontiersfolk and Indians who are alike in nobility and depravity. Gear is a vigorous writer, and when he lets the often brutal action speak for itself, he tells a gripping tale, one to be continued in a sequel, Coyote Summer.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
Gear is better known as the coauthor of several novels set in pre-Columbian North America (People of the Lightning, 1995, etc.), but his first volume in a coming-of-age saga set in 1825 demonstrates a rather formidable individual storytelling gift, his strong theme overshadowing occasional didacticism. Richard Hamilton, timid Harvard philosophy student and intellectual snob (with a propensity for verbally biting the hand that feeds him), accepts a challenge from his father: Deliver $30,000 to a business associate in St. Louis. If he doesn't accept the task, the elder Hamilton will cut the purse strings. Appalled by his father's lack of appreciation for abstract philosophy--but also by the prospect of supporting himself--Richard leaves Boston determined to remain true to his ideals and untainted by any necessary association with the ``animals'' and ``savages'' inhabiting the frontier. Predictably, one of the ``animals'' takes umbrage at Richard's contempt and retaliates. Richard, now penniless, finds himself sold into a two-year indenture as a deckhand on a Missouri River keelboat engaged in an illegal trading expedition led by an old mountain man named Travis Hartman. Richard's journey up the river is one of intellectual discovery as well as a quest for self-knowledge. In apposition to Richard is Heal Like A Willow, a young Shoshoni woman whose philosophy is also limited by lack of experience. Her rigidity of beliefs mirrors Richard's own, but experience gained during her time on the keelboat transforms her limited perceptions of white culture, in contrast to Richard's continued inability to admit the fallacies of his philosophy. Weaving together realistic characters, authentic dialogue that only occasionally overdoes the frontier dialect, and a historically accurate setting, Gear creates believable fiction that transcends and transforms its predictable plot. (Author tour) --
Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
by W. Michael Gear
