No Resting Place
A Novel
-
- $15.99
Publisher Description
A Scottish-Cherokee boy accompanies his grandparents on the Trail of Tears in this "superb" novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Ordways (Time).
Twelve-year-old Amos Ferguson is a blond, blue-eyed boy of mixed Cherokee and Scottish heritage, the son of a physician and the grandson of a gentleman farmer. Despite wealth and education, however, the family has no recourse when a drifter forges a bill of sale to their plantation: Georgia state law forbids anyone with Native American blood from testifying in court.
Amos and his grandparents are relocated to a squalid internment camp and forced to join their tribe on a long and brutal march to the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi. Along the way, the doctor's son tends to the sick as thousands perish from disease, starvation, and exhaustion. In the Republic of Texas, he bears witness to the doomed last stand of Chief Bowles and his band of Cherokee, who refuse to sacrifice the lands promised them by Sam Houston.
More than a century later, Amos's great-great-grandson narrates the story of his ancestor's harrowing journey and heroic survival, in "a novel every American should be required to read" that brings a shameful chapter of US history to life (Los Angeles Times). From the National Book Award–nominated author of Home from the Hill and Farther Off from Heaven, No Resting Place "is more than one boy's story; it is the story of a nation dispossessed and brought to its knees by the greed and power of another" (Library Journal).
This ebook features an illustrated biography of William Humphrey including rare photos form the author's estate.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dramatizing a shameful chapter in our history, Humphrey relates the story of the Trail of Tears, the forced exodus of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia in 1807, their internment in Tennessee and their virtual death march to Texas, where they were again betrayed and slaughtered. Though it's a heartbreaking saga, it lacks the bittersweet surge of narrative drive that distinguishes Humphrey's best work. The focal figure is teenager Amos Ferguson, known to his Indian kin as Noquisi. Blond, blue-eyed and fair-skinned, Amos comes from one of many prosperous, sophisticated Georgia families with mixed white and Cherokee blood. Betrayed when their tribal lands are sold to venal speculators by their own leaders, the Cherokees endure near-starvation, epidemic illness, bitter cold and killing fatigue on their journey West. Then, having finally achieved their promised homeland, the cruelly outnumbered refugees are forced into a foreordained losing battle with the Texas Rangers. Humphrey uses cumulative details to create a visceral impression of the harsh misery of the long march. While the story has intrinsic interest, it betrays difficulty in construction; flashbacks are awkwardly thrust into the narrative, and, perhaps because it is told in the third person instead of through the eyes of a narrator intimately affected by events, there is a lack of emotional engagement. Still, readers probably will welcome any new book by the author of the classic novels Home from the Hill and The Ordways and the unforgettable memoir Farther off from Heaven .
