Comments on Red Clay, Blood River
Posted on | April 6, 2009 | No Comments
I have received extensive comments from Jane Young, a published author in North Carolina, about Red Clay, Blood River. I have excerpted her reflections here.
Thanks so much for giving voice to some of what Earth knows, and for helping your mortal readers “see” and “feel” the saga of history in which we are truly one with each other and one with the universe–each as small in the scheme of things as a grain of Earth’s sand, yet each a vessel of history-changing potential.
I feel enormous appreciation for the amount of research necessary to write this book—your study of historical events, land, tools, customs/culture, architecture, and on and on, within so many settings. …. What a remarkable accomplishment!
The use of Earth as narrator was, I think, creative; and, though demanding on you as a writer, my opinion is that it ultimately worked quite well to have what amounted to an “almost omnipotent narrator” accept the limitations and rights of this “body.” For one thing, it’s a great vehicle for reflection—ie., “The humans kill in fear, forgetting that in us their histories are one.” pg. 380. …
It’s pretty amazing to me that–in spite of the frequent scene shifts and my occasional difficulty in immediately remembering what we were doing when I was last with those now on the page—you were able to make me care enough for all of them that I would quickly adjust and be glad to be back in touch with whomever had reappeared.
There are so many beautiful and poetic phrases, sentences, paragraphs, it seems pointless to identify a few. However, I’ll type one (in no way suggesting its superiority) to simply acknowledge that as I read, I was aware of your skill in this realm: “We felt the pressure building, the peoples pressed and lured from Europe, forced from Africa, colliding with the people knit by animals and plants into the rocks of mountain ridges, the loam of silted streams. It was an inexorable movement, heaving up a mountain of pain.” pg. 330.
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William J. Everett
In my teaching career I authored eight books and numerous articles in social ethics and religion. After over thirty years of academic work — in Germany, India, and South Africa as well as in the United States — I wanted to turn my hand to a poetically written novel to probe the issues of ecological and human reconciliation.
When I am not writing, I create furniture for worship settings. For more about my work, go to www.WisdomsTable.net, where you will also find galleries of artwork by my wife Sylvia, whose ancestors were the original inspiration for Red Clay, Blood River. Click to read my complete bio...
Red Clay Blood River
Red Clay, Blood River is a story told by Earth about two brothers from Germany and an enslaved South African woman whose lives bind together America’s “Trail of Tears” and South Africa’s simultaneous “Great Trek” of 1838. Memories of their journeys through oppression, estrangement and reconciliation reverberate in the lives of three contemporary students brought together by their interests in ecology. Through their often difficult friendship and a surprising discovery they begin to unravel the mystery of their estrangements, struggles, and deep connections to each other and to the earth.
Based on extensive research in the United States, South Africa, and England, this book takes readers through a sweeping saga of love and conflict in the context of emigration, invasion, slavery, and exploitation. Through its stories we are invited to see our fractured human history from within the sensibilities of an earth that seeks the flourishing of all creatures and transcends their deaths within its life.
I welcome you to read Excerpts from Red Clay Blood River.
You can also view some Reader's Responses to the book.
If you are already reading Red Clay, Blood River, check out the Reader's Guide and Glossary of Names.
If you are in a Book Club, go to the Guide for Discussion Groups.
If you want to know more about people who helped me in writing this book check out the People Present at the Creation.