The Coming
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the 2018 Spur Award for Historical Novel
A sweeping historical novel of the American West that follows the dramatic life of Daytime Smoke, Nez Perce son of explorer William Clark.
The Coming is an epic novel of native-white relations in North America, intimately told through the life of Daytime Smoke--the real-life red-haired son of William Clark and a Nez Perce woman. In 1805, Lewis and Clark stumble out of the Rockies on the edge of starvation. The Nez Perce help the explorers build canoes and navigate the rapids of the Columbia, then spend two months hosting them the following spring before leading them back across the snowbound mountains. Daytime Smoke is born not long after, and the tribe of his youth continues a deep friendship with white Americans, from fur trappers to missionaries, even aiding the United States government in wars with neighboring tribes. But when gold is discovered on Nez Perce land in 1860, it sets an inevitable tragedy in motion.
Daytime Smoke's life spanned the seven decades between first contact and the last great Indian war. Capturing the trajectory experienced by so many native peoples--from friendship and cooperation to betrayal, war, and genocide--this sweeping novel, with its large cast of characters and vast geography, braids historical events with the drama of one man's remarkable life. Rigorously researched and cinematically rendered, The Coming is a page-turning, heart-stopping American novel in a classic mode.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The destruction of the Nez Perce, who were obliterated like other Native American tribes all across the American frontier during the 19th and early 20th centuries, makes harrowing history. Osborne, author of several non-fiction books on government and bureaucracy, has attempted to contain this history in novel form, from "the coming" of Lewis and Clark in 1805 to Chief Joseph's War in 1877. Daytime Smoke, historical son of William Clark and a Nez Perce woman, leads us through this history at gallop speed chapters skip years at a time from the Nez Perce people's initial hospitality to the explorers, through the betrayal of the tribe, first by Protestant missionaries and then by the American government. Over the span of seven decades, the red-headed Smoke seeks enlightenment. Respectful of old ways, a proven provider, warrior, and leader among the Nez Perce, he also longs to gain wisdom and knowledge from his father's people. He advocates cooperation with the white settlers, learns their religion and their agricultural ways and ultimately is betrayed. He is a full-blooded character, as is his wife, Darting Swallow, and, in the beginning chapters, Clark. But Osborne cannot keep up with his huge cast of real-life characters. So much time must pass to tell this story, and so many seminal historical figures are necessary to move the story along, that few of the natives, and virtually none of the whites (with the exception of the flawed and violent missionary Henry Spalding), are any more than passing mentions in the more than 500 pages. Though it is too much to fit in one novel, this work of fiction reaches a level of truth that history cannot in depicting the collision between these two civilizations.
