A Thousand Moons
The unmissable new novel from the two-time Costa Book of the Year winner
-
-
4.1 • 14 Ratings
-
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
FROM THE TWICE-WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR
'Thrilling and enchanting.' Guardian
'Richly poetic.' Sunday Times
That I had souls that loved me and hearts that watched over me was a truth self-evident to hold.
Winona is a young Lakota orphan adopted by ex-soldiers in the aftermath of the American Civil War. Employed by a lawyer in the nearby town of Paris, Tennessee, she tries to forge a life for herself beyond the violence and dispossession of her past. But when the fragile harmony of her new life is ruptured by a traumatic event, her quest for revenge takes her on a journey that is horrifying, thrilling and enchanting in equal measure.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Barry's mournful sequel to Days Without End focuses on Winona Cole as she navigates the dangers of Reconstruction-era Tennessee and carries the memory of her dead Lakota family. Surrounded by ex-rebels too disgruntled by the Union victory and abolition to "breathe the air of peace," Winona has a hard time telling criminals from law enforcement in formerly-Confederate West Tennessee, as rebels regain the right to vote and black men freed from slavery find their newfound rights attacked. After Winona and former slave Tennyson Bouguereau are inexplicably beaten, she thinks back on her warrior mother and wonders what bravery and justice mean to an impoverished, Native woman that the local whites see as "closer to a wolf than a woman." As Winona rides out with the Freedmen militia to avenge the attacks, she narrowly cheats death, leading her to a spiritual experience that connects her with ancestors. In Winona, who sees both the beauty and the piercing loss of her world, Barry has created a vivid if didactic heroine ("Whitemen in the main just see slaves and Indians. They don't see the single souls"). This earnest tale will stay with readers.
