The Old American

I almost never read a book twice. I've read this book three times. It's a everything a novel should be: great story, intriguing characters (that you care about), clean, elegant writing, humor (I laughed about every other page),pathos, insight. Usually the insight comes wrapped in humor. (Hebert, it seems, will never hit you over the head with insight.) For example, here's aged Caucus Meteor musing to himself: "The trouble with living too long is not only that you live beyond your years, but you live beyond your convictions." Wonderful, wonderful book. It's hard to understand why it didn't get more aclaim. That's the publishing biz for you I guess.

Elegant writing by Ernest Hebert. In some ways he reminds me a little of Norman Maclean in style. Honest and elegant. A compelling time-period and characters who struggle with the way their lives are and what they could have been.

One day last spring, one of the other parents dropping kids off at school stopped me to say, "I stayed up late last night finishing the most wonderful book, and I have to tell someone, so I?m telling you." The book she was so ardently recommending was Ernest Hebert?s The Old American. What is it about certain books that elicits such a need to pass them along? I remember when I first read Hebert?s novel The Dogs of March, which I?ve argued should be assigned to newly arrived New Englanders as required reading, like taking Vermont?s Freeman?s Oath. Myself, I read every paragraph twice as I made my way through the pages, the only time I ever recall doing that. Hebert has an incomparable ear for dialogue, an ability to set off a dramatic incident like a blasting cap, and his prose conveys the gnarled, bruising beauty of the north country. Darby, the town he invented as setting for his characters? collisions with fate and one another, is a place now present in detail in my mental cosmos. Having achieved so much in a certain mode, Hebert evidently felt constrained by the conventions of the contemporary "realistic" novel. In the early 1990s he wrote a cyber-punk thriller called Mad Boys, worked on a nonfiction book about wood, then commenced work on a project seemingly very different. As he explains in a note at the end of The Old American, he had been pondering childhood memories of a monument in Keene, New Hampshire. Almost hidden behind a hedge, a plaque commemorates the site where in 1736 a settler named Nathan Blake built the town?s first log cabin, indicating that Blake was captured by Indians and taken to Canada for three years then ransomed by his wife. So why do certain books compel readers to pass them on? First, there?s the power of a fabulous story. The Old American has that, in spades: the tale of Nathan Blake?s captivity unfolds with gravity and old-fashioned excitement. This is the New England frontier, sparsely populated, opulent in game, and with cloud-crowned forests and wild, spume-torn rivers. Nathan survives a series of tests among his captors, including traversing the infamous gauntlet in a rather original way (this episode is a tour de force of narrative strength and agility). Ultimately, although by definition still a slave, Nathan makes a home for himself in the village of Conissadawaga, a town of refugiés from tribes decimated by assimilation, war, and disease. Pulled between contesting strategies for survival ? settlement with European-style cabins and farms, or continuing the nomadic, foraging life further north ? the community is coming apart along age-old rifts. Saturated with historical insights and accuracies, Hebert?s writing nonetheless vaults above its scholarly sources and succeeds as a vivid, vigorous story. In scenes of hunting and fishing, planting corn, gossiping by the fire, and gambling (paradoxically, to gain prestige by losing everything), the ancient dwellers on this land come alive. Especially movi

I absolutely loved this book! Great character development, great research, great story! And the ending was perfect. Mr. Herbert is a wonderful writer. In the words of Caucus Meteor, "I admire him very much!"

For anyone interested in the early history of this country, and in the clash between native and European cultures, this book provides a wealth of insight. The "old American" of the title is the son of King Philip, or Metacom, who led a failed native uprising in the late 1600's. King Philip was killed; his son and wife were sold into slavery in Europe. The son eventually returns to America with a lot of knowledge of European languages and culture, and with the experience of having been a slave. He becomes the leader of a group of dislocated native Americans living in Canada and, as the book opens, he participates in a raid on Keene, NH, and takes an Englishman as his prisoner/slave. This book is wonderfully written and very thought-provoking. The dynamic between master/slave and between the different cultures is fascinating.