Indie Weekend: Book Review of Land of the Blue Mist by Susan Mallgrave

Indie Weekend is my effort to help Indie authors with marketing. It’s a daunting task, and if I can help even a little, I’m happy to do it. You can help too by sharing this post far and wide with all your social media followers. Below is my review of Land of the Blue Mist, which I originally reviewed for The Historial Novel Society. The author, Susan Mallgrave, also graciously agreed to be interviewed, so please be sure and check out the Q&A below.

BOOK DESCRIPTION (FROM AMAZON)

In the tradition of Jean Auel, Charles Frazier, and Tony Hillerman comes a work of historical fiction…
Land of the Blue Mist: A Novel of Courage, Love, and Survival.

The Principal People, known as the Cherokee by others, have lived for millennia in the place they call the Land of the Blue Mist. Much of their ancestral land has been taken, over decades. But still more land is demanded.

Aster Sweetwater comes of age in this time of fierce pressure on her tribe in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Sent to boarding school to learn so-called civilized ways, she returns home to help her people fight forced removal from their mountains and valleys. But Aster returns home not knowing where she belongs. Who are her people? Should she remain in the Land of the Blue Mist or leave the only home she’s ever known, to search for her missing father?

After gold is discovered in Georgia in 1828 and the Indian Removal Act is passed two years later, the crisis intensifies, ending with U.S. troops invading Aster’s village.

Not all the Cherokee will travel the deadly Trail of Tears to the West. Having escaped capture, but with her family torn apart and her life shattered, Aster must find a way for a remnant of her people to survive in the Land of the Blue Mist.

BOOK REVIEW

The Land of the Blue Mist, or The Blue Ridge Mountains, is the home of The Principal People, also known as the Cherokee.  In the 1820s, Aster is sent by her white father to a boarding school to learn the ways of his people.  His intent is for her to then teach the Cherokee how to survive in a white man’s world, because he is going far away to avenge the death of his brother in another land.  But then gold is discovered, and greedy politicians are determined to remove the Cherokee from their homeland and send them far out west.  As Aster fights to find her place in a divided world, she is determined to save her people from removal.

This is a well-woven book about the events leading up to the Trail of Tears, the impact on the Cherokee at that time, and the fact that some Cherokee did escape from it.  As we go with 9-year-old Aster to boarding school, we also watch political events unfolding in the U.S. that will lead to the horrors of removal.  The author does a good job of building Aster’s world while also showing the government’s intrusion and her determination to stop it.  Real-life events and people are woven in, such as John Ross, Principal Chief, who fought unsuccessfully against the removal.  And it’s a fictionalized story of the small group of real Cherokee who fought back, hid, negotiated and were able to remain.  Full of action, intrigue, politics, romance, and danger, this book is not to be missed. Fans of Native American History and the history of The Blue Ridge Mountains will enjoy this book.

AUTHOR BIO

Susan Mallgrave’s first novel, a work of historical fiction, is set in the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains near her current residence and the surviving bent trees of which she writes. She is currently working on a sequel to Land of the Blue Mist. She also writes poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction. When not writing, she can be found playing tennis, hiking, traveling, and handcrafting, especially knitting socks for family and friends.

Q&A WITH SUSAN MALLGRAVE

Bonnie: Susan, first of all, thanks for agreeing to answer my questions today.

Susan: Bonnie, it’s my great pleasure! Thank you so very much for reading my book and reviewing it. It’s a lot to ask of another person, a commitment of your precious time and I appreciate it.

Bonnie: Let’s go beyond the bio. Tell us something about yourself that we wouldn’t know from reading your bio.

Susan: I’ve always loved books of all sorts–adventure tales as a child (and now!), classics, mysteries, historical novels, and non-fiction. I’m probably not so different from your readers. I wasn’t one of those folks who always wrote stories though—I envy them! I recently went through journals I had kept intermittently. What I discovered was I had been talking about writing, thinking about writing, and writing about writing for years! I was circling. If I didn’t try, I wouldn’t fail. That sort of thing. I knew, intellectually, that you can only write if you write. But I didn’t believe it. I didn’t think I knew a thing about it. And maybe I didn’t: which is why I would need to write—to learn. Silly sometimes, aren’t we?

With too much time in between them, I wrote a dozen or so poems and a half-dozen short stories. Covid down-sized and then eliminated my remote job (in Communications) and as I lamented having to find another, my husband Harry said, “You keep saying you’d like to write a novel–maybe it’s time to get serious about that?” Well, yay! (He’s my biggest supporter. At one point during my struggle with the first draft, the only reason I kept writing the novel was because I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wanted out.

You can learn the craft of writing, but I believe much of the art of writing comes osmotically, in a way. The language carried me while I learned how to structure a novel-length work. The impetus to write and the words for writing came from my having been in love with books forever. Sacred objects. It’s always been a parallel world, my journey with books.

Bonnie: Your book, Land of the Blue Mist, is set during the time of the Indian Removal Act. What inspired you to write about that terrible time?

Susan: We moved to upstate South Carolina five years ago and I joined a writers’ group. I wrote some short stories to share with the group. Land of the Blue Mist started as one. But the story kept growing and the characters became real and compelling to me, especially after I began researching. I was—and am—in awe of the 19th century accomplishments of the Aniyunwiya—the people that others call Cherokee. I had no idea prior to my research, for instance, that by 1820 they had a system of government modeled on that of the United States. Also, at one point, the Cherokee were the most literate people in the country, due to a Cherokee warrior and silversmith named Sequoyah. He invented a syllabary—a written set of symbols based on the sounds of their spoken language, and it was a brilliant success. The tribe also published a newspaper from 1828-1834, named the Cherokee Phoenix—later renamed the Cherokee Phoenix and Indians’ Advocate. Each article was written in Tsalagi (the Cherokee language) and English, side-by-side. The paper has been revived and is now published in Oklahoma, by the way.

The people and their leaders went to great lengths to assimilate within the larger culture so that they could remain in the Land of the Blue Mist, which is what they called the Blue Ridge Mountains that they had lived in for millennia. I also admire their love of and respect for nature and the environment. They are an admirable people.

I also wanted to give an alternative end to the horrendous journey to the West, during which so many died, later called The Trail of Tears.

Bonnie: Tell us about your research process for this book.

Susan: I read James Mooney’s books, Myths of the Cherokee and The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee. Mooney was an early ethnographer, working under the auspice of the Smithsonian Institute, who lived with Cherokee clans in the late nineteenth century for several years. He wanted to chronicle as much as possible about the culture before all memory of it was gone.

I also learned from John Ehle, who wrote The Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. As the title indicates, it included not just the expulsion, but other time periods as well, leading up to that ignominious ouster. I read biographies of Chief John Ross and Major Ridge, both of whom appear in the novel. I visited the Cherokee Museum in Walhalla, SC, gleaned from Native American websites, and plowed through some Eastern Cherokee census rolls. I read some scholarly articles and some editions of the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper. I read books on Cherokee herbology and gold panning. I researched for four months before writing, and then dipped in and out while writing the book.

Bonnie: Your main character, Aster, appears to be in Georgia during this book. Your biography says you live near the surviving bent trees, which were Native American trail markers. Where are the bent trees located?

Susan: The Cherokee had networks of trails for hunting and trading, as well as for “warpaths,” when engaged with enemies. These ran east to west and north to south. There was a warrior trail that connected Georgia to Pennsylvania and New York. A major trail from Charleston, SC was used to bring goods back from the coast to the northwestern corner of the state, where I live now. Because of these extensive trails, they needed guideposts. It’s speculated that’s the reason they created bent trees, starting with saplings, as “way signs.” A group called Mountain Stewards has mapped several thousand reputed marker trees in 44 states! Most of them, though, appear to be clustered where Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina meet.

Bonnie: Aster is a fictional character, but is she based on anyone in real life?

Susan: No. Well, maybe a composite. She was the trickiest for me to write, but I’m not sure why, exactly. Going Snake—Aster’s grandfather, her adopted brother Little Fox and Jayce, “the cowboy” more or less walked up to me and said “Howdy!”

Bonnie: One interesting aspect of all of this is that Aster’s father is a white man who goes back to England to avenge the death of his brother. Without giving away spoilers, it seems that there is a whole other world to possibly explore in another book. Is that something you have considered?

Susan: I thought the same thing! Great minds…I ultimately took a different direction. But I do like Timothy and may visit his life in the Lakes District of England at some point. I also may write a prequel to Blue Mist, so that I can explore Going Snake’s formative years—much happened in the Cherokee nation during his lifetime!

Bonnie: You are currently writing a sequel to Land of the Blue Mist. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Susan: The sequel takes place eighty years later, in the small, Southern Appalachian village that Aster and the others settled. The protagonist is Aster’s great-grandson, who returns to South Carolina in 1920 from the world’s war, suffering from shell shock. He finds many changes have taken place in his town while he was gone. Of course there’s a cast of other characters as well, including a young woman suffragist who yearns to leave the small town where they all live and to have a career in big city journalism. The new novel also contains entries from Aster’s 19th-century journal, so that readers discover what happened to the original group after they settled in the shadow of the Blue Wall. This is the Cherokee name for the Blue Ridge Escarpment, the sheer rock-face end of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Bonnie: Land of the Blue Mist is your first Independently published novel. How was the experience of publishing your first book and what did you learn along the way?

Susan: I used Amazon Kindle, which was a learning curve for me, but when all is said and done, it’s quite doable, in terms of formatting and uploading and there’s plenty of guidance online. I also learned I should have done publicity ahead of time and still need much improvement on promotion and marketing efforts. It’s a bit overwhelming, but other writers are helping me—shout outs to you, Bonnie, and Gail Meath!

Bonnie: It was nice to meet you, Susan, and thanks for answering my questions today! Please come back when you publish the sequel.

Susan: I’ll be happy to come back—thanks for the invitation!

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