Product Description

“A bred-in-the-bones storyteller.”—Geraldine Brooks Canaan fills a vast canvas. Its points of reference are Richmond in the throes of Reconstruction; the trading floors of Wall Street, where men makes fortunes speculating on the war’s consequences; a Virginia plantation, where the ruin of the South is written in wrenching detail; and the Great Plains, where the splendidly arrogant George Custer rides to his fate against Sitting Bull’s warriors. 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. “McCaig’s extensive research is revealed in the book’s rich historical detail and revisionist perspective. Black life in Reconstruction-era Virginia is portrayed particularly well.”—Library Journal

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #899999 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-17
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This well-wrought sequel to McCaig's Civil War novel Jacob's Ladder (2003) covers the fractious years between Lee's surrender at Appomattox and Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn. To illustrate that complex, ugly era, the narrative follows the changing fortunes of a variety of personages—a Virginia plantation owner's family and former slaves, a Yankee carpetbagger and a railroad magnate among others. The character who best captures the contradictions that McCaig is after is Edward Ratcliff, top sergeant for the 38th Regiment, United States Colored Troops, who journeys from slave to free man to member of the South Carolina Santee Indian Tribe. Before the war, Ratcliff was known as a "hincty nigger," but his white army commander treats him with respect. After travels north and west, as a scout, a trail cook, cattle driver and sharpshooter, Edward looks for a context that affords a measure of esteem. Eventually he meets and marries She Goes Before and takes a Santee name, Plenty Cuts, because of his bullwhip scars. But as the U.S. continues the persecution of Native nations, robbing them of their natural resources, Ratcliff can no longer sustain his family. Eventually he takes a job as a scout for Custer at Little Big Horn, and his fate is sealed. McCaig's latest is authoritative and occasionally profound. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Beginning after Appomattox and ending 11 years later at the Little Bighorn, McCaig's latest novel (a partial sequel to Jacob's Ladder ) is ironically titled, for his Reconstruction-era America hardly resembles paradise. His well-paced language and haunting imagery, as raw and wrenching as an open wound, capture with immediacy the widespread devastation found in the former Confederacy and the souls of its inhabitants. On their Virginia plantation, Duncan Gatewood--maimed in service to the Lost Cause--and his wife, Sallie, eke out a living while Yankee carpetbaggers muscle their way into their lives, promising easy money in the railroad industry. Out west toward Fort Laramie, Edward Ratcliff, an ex-slave and former Union officer, finds greater acceptance among the Lakota than among the white men he fought alongside, at least at first, while back in Richmond, his friend (and former Gatewood slave) Jesse Burns is elected to the state legislature. Drawing these multiple strands together is She Goes Before, Ratcliff's Santee wife, who narrates her own heartrending tale. An affecting historical novel, recounted with compassion and appropriate solemnity. Sarah Johnson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Donald McCaig, the author of Jacob’s Ladder, lives in rural Virginia, where he raises sheep and trains sheepdogs.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful, bleak, mournful, and deep.
When the opening scene of this wonderful novel consists of the execution of a Santee Sioux for a crime that he did not commit, the reader is on notice that this will not be a cheerful, light hearted tale. But Donald McCaig's newest historical novel is very well crafted, insightful, and often memorable. If it serves as an elegy for the broken dreams and crushed hopes of Reconstruction, as a new nation forgot about the slaves it had freed and devoted itself to destroying the last remnants of the Plains Indians, so be it. The facts are on the author's side, and he clothes his ideas in irresistable characters, especially that of "Plenty Cuts", a Sioux warrior who was once Edward Ratcliff, an escaped slave who served as a Sergeant Major in the Union Army. McCaig covers some of the same territory explored in the movies "Dances with Wolves" and "Little Big Man" and the novels of A.B. Guthrie, and stands up to the comparisons.
McCaig has got to be one of the most underappreciated historical novelists of our time. Read this book. You will have an easier time following it if you read his "Jacob's Ladder" first, the Civil War novel in which many of the characters in "Canaan" are introduced.

intense, complex and grim look at the Reconstruction Era
Lee's surrender at Appomattox impacts all Americans, but especially those in the south, the border states and even out west. Everywhere people struggle to adjust to the new world order as lives and relationships have changed. In this post war era, on their Stratford plantation, family patriarch Samuel Gatewoods seems in shock as he adjusts. His son Duncan comes home having lost an arm and suffering from battle fatigue syndrome compounded by his fighting as an officer for the losing side. Instead of working the plantation, Duncan builds railroads for former Confederate General Mahone while Samuel supplies them with crossties. Mahone's financer northern carpetbagger Eben Barnwell audaciously courts Samuel's granddaughter Pauline. Samuel's freed slave Jesse gives up on his dream of reuniting with his wife Maggie sold by Samuel when he owned both of them. Instead he is elected a Virginia Assemblyman.

Out west, Lakota woman She Goes Before talks about her father's hanging and her rape as she travels to Montana to marry a former slave, Union Sergeant, Ratcliff. As the years go by, Custer is in Montana along with some of those easterners like Eben who left his wife Pauline to seek a new fortune and Ratcliff returning to his military glory days.

Though a lot is packed in this profound fascinating look at the grim Reconstruction Era, historical fiction fans will want to read Donald McCaig's CANAAN, the sequel to JACOB'S LADDER. Give yourself plenty of time as the back and forth action can turn complex and convoluted though always intense. The story line focuses on these harassed characters representing three races as each tries to survive a world no longer remotely what it was before the war. Americana readers will appreciate this strong look at what happened in the east, south and west from the day after Appomattox until Custer's Last Stand.

Harriet Klausner

A Complex Tale, Well Told
This book is a sequel to McCaig's award-winning novel, "Jacob's Ladder," but enough background is given in this book to make it understandable for those readers who missed "J.L." McCaig gives us a surprisingly vivid, honest, and complex vision of Virginia, and especially Richmond, during Reconstruction. He does not mince words, accurately depicting the struggles faced by both whites and blacks in the aftermath of war, how each were exploited by the government as well as individuals, and how Northern policies, particularly with respect to railroad development, eventually led to economic ruin. Some of the scenes he paints are not particularly "politically correct," but McCaig has the courage to to tell the truth. This is not a drily told tale -- readers will empathize both with Jesse Burns, the ex-slave turned Virginia assemblyman, and Duncan Gatewood, the son of Jesse's former master, who becomes disillusioned and decides to seek his fortune out West. There a parallel tale unfolds, of similar greed and exploitative policies, this time of the Native Americans. McCaig offers an occasional first-person narrative by a Santee Sioux woman, She Goes Before, narratives that are lyrical and poetic, and speak simply of Sioux beliefs and ways. The story culminates in the battle of Little Big Horn, a "massacre" that might have been avoided, had the government kept its promises and allowed the Native Americans to retain their cultural identity and live a decent life.

This is a solid, well-written effort, and my only complaint with it is the same one I had with "Jacob's Ladder": the last quarter of the book feels rushed and isn't told with the same pacing and detail as the first 300 or so pages. As a result, the greed, arrogance, and attitude of entitlement that culminated in Custer's massacre are not as well portrayed, and not as well understood by the reader, as the similar forces that drove Reconstruction policies in the South. But my quibble is a relatively small one. This is a complex story that could have completely imploded in less skilled hands, but McCaig has done an admirable job of researching and writing this cautionary tale about Paradise: how it's defined by different groups of people, the lengths to which people will go to attain it, and the fallacy of seeking it elsewhere, rather than creating your own where you are.

This is a terrific historical novel, even better than "Jacob's Ladder."