An intriguing and dynamic tale about six victims of early European colonialism.
A historical novel dramatizes the lives of a handful of Indigenous people who encountered Christopher Columbus.
The latest book by Wilson (Hero Street, USA, 2009) spins a long, complex narrative from a footnote of the Columbus story. When the master mariner and proto-imperialist returned to Spain in 1493 from his first famous voyage to find a direct navigable route to India, the explorer brought with him the assorted treasures from the New World that he ended up discovering instead. To King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, he delivered gold, jewels, exotic birds, and plants—and six Taíno, the kidnap victims of the volume’s title. These Native Americans were part of the triumphant national tour Columbus orchestrated in order to glorify his epic voyage, but the specific fates of the Taíno captives slip away from the historical record. Two returned to the New World with Columbus on his second voyage; two remained at the Spanish court; and, in Wilson’s account, the remaining two died in Spain. The tale follows the lives of these Taíno as they cross the sea with Columbus and his crew and encounter the strange world of Renaissance Spain, a realm feeling the grip of the Inquisition and bucking with internal conflicts (the expulsion of the Jews, for instance) and external ones (clashes with the armies of Islam). And more immediately, the Taíno must deal throughout the work with the megalomania of Columbus himself. The author’s choice to narrate the story through the first-person perceptions of the Native Americans themselves has strengths that will be familiar, for example, to readers of Gary Jennings’ Aztec: The alien perspective acts like an anchor for modern readers, who’ll likely be as unfamiliar with Columbus’ world as the natives: Guarocuya, Hayuya, Cacimav, Abey, Ameyro, and Brizuela. Young Guarocuya tells their tale with vigor and vivid imagery; he’s a thoughtful, wide-eyed witness. “I think about all I’ve seen: Great castles and mosques-turned-into cathedrals, monks and priests, princes and potentates, strange food and drink, muskets and cannon, and horns that blared and church bells that rang with our every approach,” he notes. “I’ve learned about the One God that Christians, Jews and Muslims all worship, but never to each other’s satisfaction.” This approach also has its shortcomings, most of them readily visible in that same quote: Since the blanket fear and incomprehension the Taíno would have felt in Spain would do Wilson little good from a narrative standpoint, he must make the Native Americans think and speak in a far more European way than they would have in real life. It’s a kind of cultural sleight-of-hand that’s virtually unavoidable in historical fiction, but the sheer energy and imagery of the bulk of the author’s story more than compensates. He brings the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella vibrantly to life, and his portrait of Columbus as a preening egomaniac should stick with readers whether they agree with it or not.
An intriguing and dynamic tale about six victims of early European colonialism.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-981434-32-9
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Floricanto Press
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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