Pushing the Bear: A Novel of the Trail of Tears

by Diane Glancy Narrated by Diane Glancy

Overview

In 1838, thirteen thousand Cherokee were forced to leave their homeland in the Southeast and walk 900 miles to present-day Oklahoma. Hunger, cold, fatigue, and disease threatened their very survival. Their grueling relocation trek-the Trail of Tears-takes on new immediacy and meaning with this stunning work of fiction. Maritole loses not only her home and her settled life in North Carolina, but also many of the people closest to her. A chorus of voices joins hers to vividly recreate the tragic story of the Cherokee removal. Amid wrenching scenes of hardship and pain, there is the underlying strength that ultimately allowed this ancient people to endure. Diane Glancy has received many awards for her writing, including the American Book Award and the Pushcart Prize. Her luminous, poetic prose and memorable characters take on added life with this multi-voice performance by talented narrators. An interview with the author is at the conclusion of this audiobook.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Poet, dramatist, short-story writer and essayist Glancy (winner of an American Book Award for Claiming Breath) turns her talents to the novel, recreating in this bone-true tale the sorrow, struggle and betrayal suffered by the Cherokee along the Trail of Tears. In the winter of 1838-39, 13,000 Cherokee were forced to walk the Trail of Tears from North Carolina toward the "new territory" of present-day Oklahoma. Following the Native American belief that many voices are needed to tell a story, Glancy employs a multitude of narrators. There are the voices of Cherokee of all ages and clans, of white soldiers and preachers, and snatches from actual historical records. The central narrator, Maritole, emerges to tell her personal story of "pushing the bear," a dark heavy burden of anger, impending madness, physical distress and, above all, doubt in herself and her heritage as she perseveres in the grueling walk. Maritole's shaky relationship with her husband, and the deaths of her baby and parents, push her into a relationship with a white soldier, Sergeant Williams. Ultimately, however, he can't fathom the Cherokees' mystic, symbiotic relationships with the land and with each other. At times, the novel proceeds as slowly as the march itself, but it rewards the reader with a visceral, honest presentation of the Cherokee conception of story as the indestructible chain linking people, earth and ancestrya link that becomes, if not unmitigated salvation, then certainly a salve to the spirit. (Aug.)

Library Journal

First novelist Glancy (Claiming Breath, LJ 3/92) prefaces her stunning narrative with a stark statement of fact: "From November 1838 to March 1839 some 11,000 to 13,000 Cherokee walked 900 miles in bitter cold from the southeast to Indian Territory. One fourth died or disappeared along the way." Drawing on these statistics and other surviving documentation, the author imaginatively re-creates a nearly unimaginable experience: the forced removal of the Cherokee peoples from their homes in four Southern states. The story is told in many voices, principally those of the uprootedNative men and women, conjurers, Christians, politicians, leaders, and rebelsbut also heard are the white soldiers, settlers, evangelists, sympathizers, oppressors, and opportunists who witnessed their passage to what is now Oklahoma. The fictional testimony creates a graphic and compelling mosaic of human tragedy. Highly recommended.Starr E. Smith, Marymount Univ. Lib., Arlington, Va.

Kirkus Reviews

A powerful mosaic of voices combine, in poet and storywriter (Trigger Dance, 1990, etc.) Glancy's first novel, to create a haunting portrait of the Trail of Tears.

In 1838, some 13,000 Cherokee Indians were driven at bayonet point from their fertile lands (coveted by white settlers) in several southern states, and compelled to march almost a thousand miles to the Oklahoma Territory, "toward darkness, toward death," forced to leave everything behind. Perhaps a quarter of the tribe (principally the elderly, women, and children) died along the way. Glancy, interweaving first-person narratives by a number of figures, most of them Cherokees, captures the horror of the forced march, much of it made during winter, and the mingled bafflement, anger, despair, and resignation of the Cherokee (who had swiftly adopted farming and European dress, had developed their own written language, and in many cases embraced Christianity). Two voices stand out from the chorus: that of Maritole, a young woman who loses most of her family, including an infant, along the march, and who gradually discovers a stubborn determination within herself to survive; and that of her proud, distant husband Knobowtee, struggling to retain some sense of self. The Cherokee, forced to depart with only the clothes on their backs, suffered horribly in the cold. Those attempting to escape were shackled or shot by the troops guarding them. And while curious whites gathered along the route to watch the tribe pass, few offered food, or blankets, or shelter. "They called us savages," Maritole says of those who watch. "Then it was all right to drive us from our land. Then it was all right to sit along the road and watch the spectacle of our march." Those who reached Oklahoma were abandoned without shelter or supplies.

The voices that comprise the narrative are vigorous, and the period details convincing but not obtrusive. A distinctly original and haunting work of historical fiction.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170647392
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	05/02/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	783,128

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