THE SIKUMA (DOVE), THE MAVE (SNAKE), AND THE KAH-PET (TORTOISE) CLANS

A mountain man and an Indigenous woman lead parallel lives in Allred’s historical novel, the first in a planned series.

In the 1820s, along the banks of what will one day be known as the Colorado River, Akasii, daughter of the chief of the Chemehuevi people, finds herself on the cusp of adulthood. She and her friends enjoy the proximity of their new neighbors, the Aha Macav; Akasii’s particularly interested in their chief’s son, Ccearekae, who’s just completed his first successful hunt. Though her father worries about the white trappers from the east and the Spanish missionaries in the west, Akasii is more concerned with her growing feelings for Ccearekae. Meanwhile, in Ohio, a restless young man named Jedediah Smith responds to an advertisement in the newspaper for the Rocky Mountain Company. As a fur trapper, Jed has the opportunity to explore the untamed wilderness west of the Mississippi—and all the dangers that come along with it. Jed and his companions venture farther and farther southwest, eventually stumbling across the camp of the Aha Macav. Jed means no harm to Akasii and her people—he’s just hoping to make it out to the Mission San Gabriel in California—but the same cannot be said for every white man who comes over the mountains. As the human geography of the region is upended, Akasii, Ccearekae, and Jed do what they can to survive. Allred’s prose alternates between third-person narration and the perspectives of her various characters, evoking their vernaculars and worldviews. Here the plainspoken Jed describes arriving in California: “The mountains led down to a lush treeless valley which was made more picturesque by the creeks with thick cedar on [their] banks. These creeks fed into the valley. Our horses had plenty of grass here, and we saw evidence of horses and herds of cattle.” Jed’s and Akasii’s storylines cross but are largely discrete, which makes the book feel a bit like two novels jammed together. The book has been deeply researched, but Allred’s fidelity to history often gets in the way of her storytelling.

An epic but episodic novel of 1820s California.