Canaan: Book summary and reviews of Canaan by Donald McCaig

Canaan

A Novel of the Reunited States after the War

by Donald McCaig

Canaan by Donald McCaig X
Canaan by Donald McCaig
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Book Summary

This is the story of America over twenty years of its most turbulent history. The characters are black, white, red, ex-Union, and ex-Confederate, and the principal narrator is a Santee woman, She Goes Before, who marries an ex-slave. Through her eyes we witness the hanging of her father by whites in the mass execution of 1863, Red Cloud's banquet with President Grant, and that final confrontation on the bluffs above the Little Bighorn.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"McCaig's latest is authoritative and occasionally profound." - PW.

"Black life in Reconstruction-era Virginia is portrayed particularly well; Jesse Burns, who rises from slavery to become a state assemblyman, embodies the modest but real gains made by blacks in that brief, hopeful time." - Library Journal.

"A husk of a novel; busy, but without cumulative power." - Kirkus.

This information about Canaan was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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More Information

The sequel to Jacob's Ladder (2003).

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