Deep Creek
A Novel
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
One of the Washington Post’s Best Novels of the Year: A “fascinating” tale of murder in 1880s Idaho, based on real historical events (The Daily Beast).
Idaho Territory, June 1887. A small-town judge takes his young daughter fishing, and she catches a man. Another body surfaces, then another. The final toll: over thirty Chinese gold miners brutally murdered. Their San Francisco employer hires Idaho lawman Joe Vincent to solve the case.
Soon he journeys up the wild Snake River with Lee Loi, an ambitious young company investigator, and Grace Sundown, a métis mountain guide with too many secrets. As they track the killers across the Pacific Northwest, through haunted canyons and city streets, each must put aside lies and old grievances to survive a quest that will change them forever.
Deep Creek is a historical thriller inspired by actual events and people: the 1887 massacre of Chinese miners in remote and beautiful Hells Canyon, the brave judge who went after their slayers, and the sham race-murder trial that followed.
In this enhanced ebook edition, Deep Creek teams history with invention, setting authentic photographs and maps alongside the authors’ brilliant fiction to illuminate this long-forgotten American tragedy, in a tale of courage and redemption, loss and love.
The Washington Post has named Deep Creek a Best Novel of 2010, and The Daily Beast/Newsweek ranked it among the dozen best Western novels since 1960.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The 1887 massacre of more than 30 Chinese gold miners in a remote area of the Idaho territory provides the real-life foundation for this engrossing look at racial prejudice and the settling of the West, the first novel from Hand (the pen name for William Howarth and Anne Matthews). After police judge Joe Vincent and his 10-year-old daughter, Nell, find a body while fishing, more brutally mutilated bodies turn up along the Snake River. The Sam Yup Company, a Chinese labor exchange, hires Vincent to find the culprits. Lee Loi, an ambitious investigator, and Grace Sundown, a M tis mountain guide who shares a past with Vincent, join the hunt. The three track a murderous crew through remote canyons and towns. The plot soon evolves into an insightful look at how Chinese immigrants and American Indians became the targets of rage and violence. The subsequent capture and trial of the killers illustrate that how the West was won was neither simple nor fair to minorities.
