Season Of The Snake by Claire Davis, c.2005, St. Martin’s Press, New York , 276 pages

Idaho writer Claire Davis will read from her newly published second novel, Season Of The Snake at the on-going Mid-Columbia Literary Festival Friday, May 6. She will appear at 7 p.m. at a free workshop at the HUB at Columbia Basin College.

This book, set near and in Hell’s Canyon, is a psychological thriller that offers a skillfully drawn portrait of the harsh, dangerous landscape that separates Idaho from Washington and Oregon. In it, a woman scientist, who studies rattlesnakes and knows well the nuances of their behavior, faces an unexpected challenge – understanding the motives of a furtive viper in human form.

The author’s strongest assets are in scene setting and development of character, as she also demonstrated in Winter Range, named the best first novel by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. Davis also received a Pushcart Prize for her short fiction.

Her public appearance at CBC is sponsored by the college and the Mid-Columbia Library Foundation.

--Reviewed by Bonnie Taylor, author and member of the Mid-Columbia Library Board of Trustees.

Meriwether by David Nevin, c.2004, A Forge Book, New York, 348 pages

Ulysses S. Grant by Josiah Bunting III, c.2004, The American Presidents, Time Books, New York, 181 pages

The Journey of Crazy Horse by Joseph M. Marshall III, c.2004Viking, New York, 310 pages

One joined the Army when he was 20, became secretary to a president and then led a military expedition west.

One was a West Point grad and ex-soldier who rejoined in 1861 to fight for the Union.

One was a warrior, and a visionary, who risked his life many times for his people.

All three shaped American history, and are the focus of three new books, one a novel on Meriwether Lewis, and two biographies on Ulysses S. Grant and Crazy Horse.

Although their years of greatness are separated, their lives caused overlapping consequences.

David Nevin’s novel, Meriwether, of course comes earliest in time. It is classified as fiction but it reads like a historical recitation. Even the dialogue seems carefully designed to reflect the author’s research on both Meriwether Lewis and George Clark.

Unlike many stories the concentrate on Lewis’s great 1804 venture across North American, this novel best looks at the explorer’s younger years. Although Lewis achieved much on his famous two-year journey, he never was able to write the definitive book about his trip west. His life afterwards was not what he’d hoped for, and his state of mind grew more morose. He died in 1809 at the age of 34 after being shot twice (controversially described as a suicide). The ramifications from his western venture, however, lived on and undoubtedly are still being felt today.

Many scholarly works written over the last century and a half tell the story of Civil War hero and U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant – an overwhelming amount of words. That’s what draws a curious, casual history reader to a small new volume, bearing his name for its title.

In a few hours’ read, it is actually possible to get a basic appreciation for what made this quiet, “functional soldier” an American hero. Historian Josiah Bunting III deserves credit for being able to deal with big ideas in a quick, graspable way in Ulysses S. Grant.

The great general’s contemporaries did not expect his rise to such leadership. Grant, educated at West Point, left the Army in 1854 to be with his growing family, Home for the Grants in 1861 was Galena, Illinois. It was there that he volunteered to fight for the Union and from which he rose in rank to lead the Northern forces and become president after the horrendous war.

An example of depth from this small biography: “Grant had been bequeathed a set of political challenges together more severe than those that have greeted all American presidents save only two. (Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt) at their inaugurations. But by far the largest and most difficult was the huge welter of unresolved issues subsumed under the term Reconstruction. Historians have long undervalued or ignored this element of the Grant presidency, drawn as they have been to the scandals …”

Grant’s commitment to the freed slaves and to Lincoln’s hope to bring the country back together cost him politically, as did his proposed benevolent policy toward the Native Americans. Frederick Douglass said, “To Grant more than any other man the Negro owes his enfranchisement and the Indian a humane policy.”

But most of his countrymen did not share Grant’s vision for fair treatment and protection of Blacks and Native Americans. In the South it meant limited success for Reconstruction. Out west It meant open war between the settlers and various tribes, and it mean the rise of another hero, Crazy Horse.

In The Journey of Crazy Horse, author Joseph M. Marshall III traces one warrior’s life along with the successful efforts of whites to take over their lands. Marshall sees Crazy Horse as an extraordinary man who fought to protect his people and culture. As that goal drove him to battle, it also led him at last to accept the prospect of reservation life, so that the Lakota could survive.

Raised on the Redbud Sioux Indian Reservation, Marshall’s first language is Lakota.

Crazy Horse is not just a hero to him, but a presence in the historian’s mind. Telling the warrior’s story using the oral history of Lakota storytellers, also offered Marshall a way to seek self-understanding and insight into his own people’s history.

The link between Lewis and Grant and Crazy Horse is not personal, but it is nevertheless direct. Crazy Horse was born nearly three decades after Lewis trekked west and Manifest Destiny bloomed. At one point after his victories in battle, the warrior turned down a request to go to D.C.

He could not turn down the growing desire of whites to control the Great Plains. Crazy Horse died at the age of 33, stabbed by a U.S. soldier. But his lifelong quest was not in vain. The Lakota survived.

--Reviewed by Bonnie Taylor, author and member of the Mid-Columbia Board of Trustees.