The Strong Current opens a rare window into the Upper Creek Indians, their customs, and their coming of age. Author Robert Day has obviously read deeply in sources on Creek life, and every page of this historical novel is a new education about an earlier world. Read your Creek and Creek War history, but don’t put off adding the spark of life to it with this book.
The Strong Current is a beautifully written, well-researched story of the instruction and passage of Boy Emathla into manhood. The setting, effectively evoked by Robert Day, is a Creek Indian community in central Alabama in the early nineteenth century, but the lessons learned are universal—know yourself, seek that which is true, live with honor and courage.
The Strong Current is exceedingly well-researched and well-crafted historical fiction with a brilliantly rendered catharsis that unites the world of the senses with the divine. Part bildungsroman, dream vision, and pastoral elegy, The Strong Current is a paean for a world of custom and ceremony and a meditation on the lost American past.
Robert Day has given us something rare—a sharply imagined evocation of a long-lost American world, serving as the milieu for timeless, universal themes—the growth to manhood, the shaping of values, and the arc of leadership. It has a touch of The Deerslayer in it, but there is the unmistakable imprint of Marquez-style magic realism here, too. This first volume is just the start of an extraordinary journey into a now strange and shadowy landscape of Native American archetypes, spirits, and intense natural energies.
The Strong Current is an engaging, fast-paced tale of an Indian youth facing transition to manhood. Robert Day’s story of Emathla’s struggles as an initiate to become a tustenuggee [warrior] is captivating! Emathla, in learning about himself, finds that the weakness of his body is filled by the strength of his heart, that it is his interior spark and search for a deeper truth that will reveal himself as a warrior—that it will only be accomplished by the honing of his spiritual strength.
The Strong Current is an engaging, fast-paced tale of an Indian youth facing transition to manhood. Robert Day’s story of Emathla’s struggles as an initiate to become a tustenuggee [warrior] is captivating! Emathla, in learning about himself, finds that the weakness of his body is filled by the strength of his heart, that it is his interior spark and search for a deeper truth that will reveal himself as a warrior—that it will only be accomplished by the honing of his spiritual strength. — Jim Tiger, attorney, Duncan Tiger & Niegel, PC
The Strong Current opens a rare window into the Upper Creek Indians, their customs, and their coming of age. Author Robert Day has obviously read deeply in sources on Creek life, and every page of this historical novel is a new education about an earlier world. Read your Creek and Creek War history, but don’t put off adding the spark of life to it with this book. — David Bagwell, attorney and jackleg South Alabama historian
The Strong Current is an engaging, fast-paced tale of an Indian youth facing transition to manhood. Robert Day’s story of Emathla’s struggles as an initiate to become a tustenuggee [warrior] is captivating! Emathla, in learning about himself, finds that the weakness of his body is filled by the strength of his heart, that it is his interior spark and search for a deeper truth that will reveal himself as a warrior—that it will only be accomplished by the honing of his spiritual strength. — Jim Tiger, attorney, Duncan Tiger & Niegel, PC
The Strong Current is a beautifully written, well-researched story of the instruction and passage of Boy Emathla into manhood. The setting, effectively evoked by Robert Day, is a Creek Indian community in central Alabama in the early nineteenth century, but the lessons learned are universal—know yourself, seek that which is true, live with honor and courage. — Woody Hannum, professor of history, University of South Alabama
Robert Day has given us something rare—a sharply imagined evocation of a long-lost American world, serving as the milieu for timeless, universal themes—the growth to manhood, the shaping of values, and the arc of leadership. It has a touch of The Deerslayer in it, but there is the unmistakable imprint of Marquez-style magic realism here, too. This first volume is just the start of an extraordinary journey into a now strange and shadowy landscape of Native American archetypes, spirits, and intense natural energies. — Bill Butler, owner, Butler Books, Louisville, Kentucky
The Strong Current is exceedingly well-researched and well-crafted historical fiction with a brilliantly rendered catharsis that unites the world of the senses with the divine. Part bildungsroman, dream vision, and pastoral elegy, The Strong Current is a paean for a world of custom and ceremony and a meditation on the lost American past. — Tam Carlson, professor of English, University of the South
