People of the Mist
A Novel of North America's Forgotten Past
-
-
4.9 • 10 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
With People of the Mist, bestselling authors W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear take us to the Chesapeake Bay of six hundred years ago, when the unprovoked and brutal murder of a young woman on the eve of her wedding threatens to turn the entire Algonquin Nation against itself in a brutal war that could destroy them as a people.
No ordinary woman, Red Knot was the heir to the Greenstone Clan and the future leader of the independent villages. Her death has shattered all alliances and left a power void that several ambitious clan chiefs see as their destiny to fill. The very air vibrates with the drums and war cries of the rallying warriors.
Into the eye of this brewing storm steps the bitter old man they call The Panther. Feared as a sorcerer, The Panther is the only one with the power to demand to be heard by all. But as he digs deeper into the ever-thickening web of lies surrounding the murder, and uncovers darker, more deeply rooted secrets, he fears there may be no words to stop the impending bloodshed.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The eighth in a series of popular novels about precolonial North America (People of the Wolf; People of the Fire; etc.) concerns the Algonquins who inhabited the Chesapeake Bay area 600 years ago. Once the villagers of Flat Pearl decide to seek an alliance with their former enemy, the Great Tayac Copper Thunder, their crafty headwoman arranges to seal the peace by arranging a marriage between him and her granddaughter Red Knot. On the day Red Knot must leave with Tayac, she is found murdered in the nearby forest, and her secret lover, High Fox (the scion of a rival village made uneasy by the pending alliance), is a prime suspect. A girl from his own village, Sun Conch, is in love with High Fox and goes to the sorcerer-hermit Panther for help in acquitting him. In what is essentially a detective story, the Panther decides to visit different warring villages to discover the murderer. Though the novel suffers from a jarring, extraneous introduction meant to dramatize abuses of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, simple prose brightened by atmospheric detail sweeps this fluid, suspenseful mix of anthropological research and character-driven mystery to a solid, satisfying resolution.
