Shoshone Mike

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Based on lamentable historical events of 1910-1911 in frontier Nevada, this exhaustively researched first novel tells the tale unremittingly, with mercy for the killers, with immense sympathy for the unoffending victims. Four stockmen have been murdered, by whom no one knows, though the trivial fact of ignorance doesn't deter the murderous posse composed of state troopers and other vigilantes from absolute certainty that those ``Injuns,'' the Shoshones, have committed the crime. Of the four dead men, three are Basque immigrants, about whom the posse couldn't care less, a ``Basco'' being no better than an Indian. It is to avenge the fourth man lily-white that they pursue and slaughter the well-meaning, hard-working Shoshone Mike and his family, who are caught during their seasonal migration. The passionate purpose of Bergon's book is to remind us of a dark aspect of our past. Himself a descendent of Basque settlers, he employs a spare and simple narrative voice to build an enormously affecting tale. November 5

Library Journal

Shoshone Mike was the patriarch of an Indian family that fled the reservation after being involved in the death of a white rustler. They feared retaliation, and so when four stockmen chanced upon their hiding place they shot them. For this they were hunted down and virtually exterminated in one of the West's final Indian fights. The 1911 incident is the focus of this first novel. In it Bergon examines again whether civilized man is really any less savage than so-called primitive man. Unfortunately, he continually underscores his theme rather than allowing it to develop unobtrusively from his story. Although the characters are based on actual people, most of them are one dimensional. Well intentioned, well researched, and at times well written, this fails to develop into a satisfying whole. Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib . , Randolph, Mass.