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Overview
Shadow of the Moon, the powerful work of fiction that Jones's fans have long awaited, takes us on a great expedition from Scotland to the untamed wilds of the Ohio River Valley. Though the physical journey is arduous - filled with death, fear, courage, and suffering - another journey emerges, one that brings these characters from their diverse backgrounds to a newly forged common identity as Americans. We follow Young Bone Trudeau, freed African slave; Noble Popjoy, half-Delaware Indian wilderness guide; the Chesney family; and a supporting cast of European immigrants as they grapple with the birth of this new republic, and defend it with their lives if necessary. Jones's characters are as vast and unpredictable as the wilderness they set out to conquer, especially the enterprising matriarch of the Chesney clan: pipe-smoking, savvy businesswoman Nalambigi Chesney, who calls herself a "red savage heathen" as she beats the white man at his own game over and over again. We also watch the lives of her children - Campbell, Gance, and Clariese - unfold and sometimes unravel, as they strive to put their own imprint on the face of this newly settled land.Both a brilliant storyteller and a superbly authentic chronicler of the American West, Douglas C. Jones has been honored with the Golden Spur Award three times for best western historical novel. In this dramatic work, he gives readers a heroic saga of the founding of our nation, from the American Revolution to the tremors of pre-Civil War discontent.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Several Golden Spur Awards for Best Western Historical Novel, as well as the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Contribution and Achievement in Western American Lettres, have come Jones's way for his 15 historicals (The Treaty of Medicine Lodge, etc.). Now the author scores again, with an epic family saga of life on America's frontier from 1772 to 1827. Though nave and inexperienced, young Scot immigrant Robert Chesney quickly adapts to the hardships, dangers and challenges of frontier life, becoming a skilled woodsman and scout. He settles in the wilderness of western Pennsylvania, but the American Revolution soon pulls him east to fight the British, first on the disastrous expedition to capture Quebec and later at the stunning American victory at Saratoga. Marrying Nalambigi, a Narraganset-Abanaki Indian, Chesney moves with his new family to the Ohio Valley, though more than once he is called away to fight Indians or the British. Meanwhile, strong-willed Nalambigi raises four children and builds a prosperous business empire in the white man's world. Informed by the tides of history, peopled by a vivid cast of real (Benedict Arnold; Aaron Burr) and imagined characters, this is a rousing adventure yarn, told with power and grace. Film, dramatic, first serial, translation rights: Wieser and Wieser. (Feb.)Book Details
Published
December 31, 1996
Publisher
Thorndike, Me. : Thorndike Press, 1996.
Pages
668
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780786206919