Long Knife

Long Knife, by James Alexander Thom

This is no dime western novel full of  1950's style 'Me Indian, you Paleface' stuff.  This is not a sensual and grotesquely violent depiction of a west more filthy and amoral than good. Nor is this some dry biography filled with only the kind of military marching about that I love.

But let me describe the book to you in the author's own words from his ending note, with which I heartily agree: "The tale you have just read is as much history as novel. It is true to the documented facts of the events it describes." From the almost miraculous battles won to the mysterious love of Clark's life accuracy and live drama is the author's achieved goal.

May these few words from the very beginning of this majestic, amazing and totally awesome story assist you in making a decision to read it for yourself. The story of a real life American, and his family, one that puts Fenimore Cooper's 'Deerslayer' to shame: 'Clark's Point, Indiana territory, 1809. The old general felt it coming at sunset on that fine cool evening while he sat on the porch of his log house on the bluff overlooking the Ohio: a greater melancholy than any he had faced in the thirty years of his decline." The book begins and ends in the last decades of  George Rogers Clark's life.  The rest is spent living out the story of his conquering of almost the entire Northwest Territory over the early years of the American revolution with a few hundred Woodsmen, and his own wit, physical and spiritual strength.

Reading fiction, and non-fiction like this, is one major reason Mona and I must head out on the road in two months to find the places, and memories they hold, of events long or not so long gone.  We all who call ourselves Americans walk in the moccasin steps of men and women like George Clark, and his younger brother of 'Lewis & Clark Expedition' fame, William. And we will have access by Alpine Coach to the entire North American continent to do our exploring because the Clark's of America, and the Mackenzie's of Canada started us all off by turning footpaths into highways.

A brief history of Clark from the website for the park at Louisville, Ky, where his retirement cabin site is preserved:
http://www.fallsoftheohio.org/george_rogers_clark.html

-Ken