LAND SHADOWS

Striegel’s historical novel spins the tale of a young immigrant determined to fulfill his father’s dream.

It is 1851 on the Isle of Barra in Scotland, and the members of the McNeil family, along with all of their neighbors, are being evicted from their home by their landlord in violent action known as the Clearances. In cahoots with the English, the Scottish landowners are clawing back land that the locals have lived and farmed on for generations. James and Mary McNeil, along with their 9-year-old son, Murdoch, and 8-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, barely escape the carnage and purchase passage to New York. Only Murdoch survives the journey, arriving in New York as a penniless orphan. He is placed in an orphanage until 1853, when the efforts of a kind teacher are rewarded with Murdoch’s appointment as a printer’s apprentice. His love of reading, and his extraordinary photographic memory, lead him to spend his free time at the public library, where he develops a fascination with law books. It is here that Murdoch is discovered by the successful attorney Henry P. Townsend. By 1868, Murdoch is a lawyer working alongside Henry. He still clings to his father’s words of advice: “Do anything you have to do to get land and to keep it.” The opportunity to do just that is close at hand. The narrative is conveyed from several perspectives, beginning with that of James McNeil and then alternating between the points of view of Murdoch and a third-person narrator. (Near the end of the complex and often tragic McNeil family saga, the voice of the Indigenous girl Murdoch adopts as his daughter takes over.) Striegel is a vividly descriptive wordsmith. He viscerally depicts the stench and deprivation experienced by those travelling to America in steerage, the difficulties of city life as suffered by the underprivileged, and the beauty of the New Mexican territory. The novel also offers a detailed historical look at America’s brutal acquisition of the Western land, including decades-long legal battles and the cruel disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples.

Poignant, disturbing, and engaging, with an emotionally and morally complicated protagonist.