I read a lot, at least two books a week and mostly historical fiction. I haven’t wanted to turn this blog into a book review blog. But I wanted to share Amanda Skenandore’s 2018 debut novel with you. It’s so relevant now because the subject matter relates to recent publicity over the Native American boarding schools run by whites for many decades.
The plot
This moving novel is set in the tragic intersection between white and Native American culture. In it a woman learns about friendship, betrayal, and the sacrifices made in the name of belonging.
Alma Mitchell goes back
It begins on a quiet Philadelphia morning in 1906. A newspaper headline catapults Alma Mitchell back to her past. A federal agent is dead. And the murder suspect is Alma’s childhood friend, Harry Muskrat. Harry–or Asku, as Alma knew him. Asku was the most promising student at the “savage-taming” boarding school run by her father. Alma was the only white pupil.
Created in the wake of the Indian wars
Created in the wake of the Indian Wars, the fictional Stover School was intended to assimilate the children of neighboring reservations. Instead, it robbed them of everything they’d known–language, customs, even their names. The punishments and restrictions were harsh. And the school left a heartbreaking legacy in its wake.
Became friends
Alma, as might be imagined, became friends with her classmates, despite her mother’s caution otherwise. She snuck out at night with them into the forest where they relived their songs and traditions. She took on an Indian name and learned Indian words. She fell in love with an Indian boy.
Couldn’t be a murderer
As news of the murder sinks in, Alma thinks surely the bright, courageous boy she knew could never have murdered anyone. But she barely recognizes the man Asku has become. He is cold and embittered at being an outcast in the white world and a ghost in his own. Her lawyer husband, Stewart, reluctantly agrees to help defend Asku for Alma’s sake.
Revisiting painful secrets
To defend Asku, Alma must revisit the painful secrets she has kept hidden from everyone–especially Stewart. Told in compelling narratives that alternate between Alma’s childhood and her present life, Between Earth and Sky is a haunting and complex story of love and loss, as a quest for justice becomes a journey toward understanding and, ultimately, atonement.
Touching and sad
The book has a good ending of sorts, and Ms. Skenandore has done a good job of wrapping things up. I highly recommend the book, even though I can find no evidence of its most shocking atrocity. (I won’t tell you what that is in case you want to pick it up.) I got Between Earth and Sky via Amazon for my Kindle without charge on Kindle Unlimited, but used paperback copies are available inexpensively.
Another of her books
I’m reading another of her books now about a Hollywood celebrity sent to live in a leper colony in the 1920s. It’s called The Second Life of Mirielle West. And I thoroughly enjoyed my first book of hers, The Nurse’s Secret, in part about early nurses’ training in the U.S.