David Fitz-Gerald remembers signing up for an elective class in high school, “The Novel as History,” where he read James Michener’s The Source and became a lifelong fan of historical fiction. “I think that was maybe the only A I got that year,” Fitz-Gerald jokes. But, he certainly did pay attention to Michener’s epic sense of scale and his use of detail to make the past come alive, techniques that he employed for his latest release, Wanders Far, which transports readers to the Adirondack Mountains in the 12th century, exploring the lives and legends of Native American tribes from the region.
Aside from some creative writing in college, Fitz-Gerald had never really thought of writing historical fiction while working in business and living in the Adirondacks region where he grew up. “And then, all of a sudden, a few years ago, I began doing some family research,” he explains. That research led him to learn a lot about his family history—including his ancestor Rev. Edgerton Ryerson Young, a Methodist missionary who wrote about his own experiences on the plains of Canada in the late 1800s.
He also learned about his grandparents’ resort near Wilmington, New York, the Paleface Ski Center and Dude Ranch. “It was a pretty fun place to spend time as a kid,” Fitz-Gerald says of the resort, which included a motel and restaurant. Through the eyes of an adult, however, Fitz-Gerald saw the ranch for its storytelling potential: “That’s where I started combining facts and making stories around those facts.”
Fitz-Gerald’s research and fictional additions became his first historical novel, In the Shadow of a Giant. After its publication, he set his sights beyond his family, aiming to tell the story of the whole Adirondacks region, which he knows and loves very well. The author belongs to a group of hikers known as the “46ers,” those who have climbed all 46 peaks in the Adirondacks measuring above 4,000 feet. Throughout these many hikes, Fitz-Gerald found inspiration walking throughout the area’s lush forests and snow-capped mountains. “In 2018, I walked 50 miles in one day as a re-enactment of a story from my first book,” he says. “ I guess that also became research for the character of my second book.”
That second book, Fitz-Gerald’s latest release, centers around the aptly named Wanders Far, a young Mohawk boy in the 12th century who is constantly slipping away from his mother, Bear Fat, and venturing deep into the wilderness. “He developed in my mind definitely as somebody who wanted to run the trails and be on his own,” Fitz-Gerald says. “As a hiker myself, I thought a lot about him while I was on long hikes.” Within the story, which Kirkus calls “a solidly written tale with engaging characters and ample details,” Wanders Far’s boundless energy and urge to explore come through on nearly every page:
An idea came to him. Why not climb the mountain? All the way to the top. Though he couldn’t think of any reason to do it, he couldn’t think of any reason not to either. It wasn’t far from where they were, and moments after the impulse came to him, Wanders Far was on his way.
Wanders Far’s love of adventure, running, and hiking are much more than character traits in the novel, however. His physical abilities eventually play a part in forming the historical Iroquois Confederation that brought together the nations of the region. Fitz-Gerald had originally intended to write about the local Whiteface Mountain and how it got its name. (Among the many explanations is the Native American legend that those who can “see with romance” will see the mountain’s white face.) “But, the scope of the story just kept creeping bigger and bigger,” Fitz-Gerald explains. Soon, Wanders Far was running into other historical events, and Fitz-Gerald found himself with the beginning of what he hopes will be a long series following the people of the region beyond Wanders Far’s time.
Fitz-Gerald’s inspiration in nature and legends also led him to add another fictional layer to Wanders Far: the supernatural. He refers to the book as a “mystical adventure” and wanted his hero to embody the depth of Native spiritual beliefs. In the book, Wanders Far can not only run long distances, but he has eerie visions. “Sometimes I visualize the future, and it happens just like I picture it,” Wanders Far explains through teary eyes to his grandfather. “Some of the visions are glorious, and some are horrific.” As the novel progresses and Wanders Far grows up, his connections to nature, the spiritual realm, and his otherworldly powers continue to grow. “That was actually my favorite part to write,” Fitz-Gerald says. “I kept thinking about every rock and every tree having its own spirit. I wanted to give that spirituality more depth.”
While Wanders Far himself is an invented character and Fitz-Gerald has taken a lot of liberty in telling the story of the Iroquois Confederation, he still strove to re-create the Iroquois’ life in the Adirondacks as accurately as possible. He spent time researching the ways they built their canoes, organized their days, and especially how they structured their society. “It’s one of the world’s oldest democracies,” Fitz-Gerald says. And from a modern viewpoint, it was also progressive as it was based on matriarchy. Wanders Far’s mother sits on the “Women’s Council,” which votes on some of the confederation’s most important decisions—a historical element that Fitz-Gerald knew he had to include.
The author himself is unsure of exactly when he was first drawn to the legends of Native American heroes, but he knows that for as long as he can remember, he loved reading about Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, Sacajewa, and the lives of other Native Americans. With, Wanders Far, he hopes to have added his own hero to the list and given people a unique view into the history and region that he loves. “I wanted a sense of the Adirondack history,” he says. “I wanted for readers to feel like they were walking in the shoes of people who lived a hundred years ago and to empathize with people living at historical moments.”
Rhett Morgan is a writer and translator based in Paris.
