I will never post spoilers. These types of posts will just be general what am I reading/what did I think of it type of reviews.
Book Summary
It’s the early spring of 1875 in the Cherokee Nation West. A baby, a black hired hand, a bay horse, a gun, a gold stash, and a preacher have all gone missing. Cherokee America Singer, known as “Check,” a wealthy farmer, mother of five boys, and soon-to-be widow, is not amused.
In this epic of the American frontier, several plots intertwine around the heroic and resolute Check: her son is caught in a compromising position that results in murder; a neighbor disappears; another man is killed. The tension mounts and the violence escalates as Check’s mixed race family, friends, and neighbors come together to protect their community–and painfully expel one of their own.
Cherokee America vividly, and often with humor, explores the bonds–of blood and place, of buried histories and half-told tales, of past grief and present injury–that connect a colorful, eclectic cast of characters, anchored by the clever, determined, and unforgettable Check.
Genre Tags
Historical Fiction, Western, Native American
What did I think?
I …. did not love it. It should have ticked all the boxes for me; strong female lead, period, historical, lives very different from my own. I just couldn’t get into it.
The writing was part of it. Some authors write the books in the way that the main character would tell it, so an unreliable main character makes for unreliable narration, and a lot of authors do that very well. It makes for an immersive story, you only get the details that this character gets and you get it through the lens of their perception.
Some authors divorce the narrative from their main characters, so the reader gets a much wider perspective at all times. I don’t know if she was trying to find a middle ground (and failing for me) or completely failing at divorcing the narration, but I couldn’t get past that.