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Bloodroot Cantons
In 1729, enslaved Africans made a well-planned, well-equipped flight from eastern Virginia to the Shenandoah Valley. Their brave effort, history records, ultimately failed.
But in Bloodroot Cantons, history takes a different turn. The escaped Africans meet a Shawnee band, whose own ugly history with whites makes for an alliance that defeats the pursuing slavecatchers. The two linked communities create a refuge from British colonial power for native people and for the enslaved. Then call of justice, good farmland, and dissatisfaction with increasingly ungodly Pennsylvania, bring in a third group – Anabaptists and Quakers. From distinct traditions, from songs and dreams, from wit and necessity, from the talents of women and men, young and old, mother and warrior, sage and craftswoman, new hope arises. But only ingenuity and patient sharing of wisdoms can overcome the British military threat, and earn the Bloodroot Cantons their season in history.
I hope to bring you here people as real as the ones I have worked with 40 years of activism, people just as engaged in their world of colonial Virginia in 1729 as you and I are in our world. As an activist, as a listener and advisor for thousands of people over decades I know how people really speak and act, or don’t act, in crisis. I have shared many moments when “ordinary” people were transformed into activists, whether for a few months or for a lifetime. I have learned that people are transformed not by slogans or organizers, but by necessity – external and internal. And both kinds of necessity, each informed by each person’s culture, drive the characters and events of Bloodroot Cantons.
It is nice, though, that writing is not just about people’s struggles, but is also a chance to enjoy the natural world and the little details of life. And in this book, I got to enjoy, and hope you will enjoy, a natural world much less damaged than the one I live in, but in pretty much the same location. Going out to see the Virginia spring flowers, including of course the bloodroot flower that I photographed and is on the cover of my book, was part of my research,
A lot of reading, some from original sources, also helped create this book. However, I promise to keep all my research that isn’t necessary in the background, and not to beat you down with big chunks of research like “Ichabod picked up his beaver hat, made of a pelt which he had purchased from the Mandan tribe while serving in the 43rd Regiment of the Brockenbrough Fusiliers, noting the typical blue cross-stitching of the Mandan and the tiny indentations made by the needle made from the rear claw of the hibernating Missouri mud turtle.” I do know that Bloodroot Cantons is a story, not history or nature studies.
The story-telling I have done the most of in my life is telling their own stories back to people, but in a way that ensured they could see hope and see opportunities to be powerful and smart and giving. This novel is the same kind of story-telling, except that I am much harder on myself than most of my listeners have been on me.
Hope and opportunity abound in this book, but they are tested in every reasonable and likely way I can think of. There are victories here, but every one of them will be earned as you watch. My goal is that you delight in the victories in this story, but that you also believe they really could have been won, and perhaps in some way still could be won, by people as real as you and I.
But in Bloodroot Cantons, history takes a different turn. The escaped Africans meet a Shawnee band, whose own ugly history with whites makes for an alliance that defeats the pursuing slavecatchers. The two linked communities create a refuge from British colonial power for native people and for the enslaved. Then call of justice, good farmland, and dissatisfaction with increasingly ungodly Pennsylvania, bring in a third group – Anabaptists and Quakers. From distinct traditions, from songs and dreams, from wit and necessity, from the talents of women and men, young and old, mother and warrior, sage and craftswoman, new hope arises. But only ingenuity and patient sharing of wisdoms can overcome the British military threat, and earn the Bloodroot Cantons their season in history.
I hope to bring you here people as real as the ones I have worked with 40 years of activism, people just as engaged in their world of colonial Virginia in 1729 as you and I are in our world. As an activist, as a listener and advisor for thousands of people over decades I know how people really speak and act, or don’t act, in crisis. I have shared many moments when “ordinary” people were transformed into activists, whether for a few months or for a lifetime. I have learned that people are transformed not by slogans or organizers, but by necessity – external and internal. And both kinds of necessity, each informed by each person’s culture, drive the characters and events of Bloodroot Cantons.
It is nice, though, that writing is not just about people’s struggles, but is also a chance to enjoy the natural world and the little details of life. And in this book, I got to enjoy, and hope you will enjoy, a natural world much less damaged than the one I live in, but in pretty much the same location. Going out to see the Virginia spring flowers, including of course the bloodroot flower that I photographed and is on the cover of my book, was part of my research,
A lot of reading, some from original sources, also helped create this book. However, I promise to keep all my research that isn’t necessary in the background, and not to beat you down with big chunks of research like “Ichabod picked up his beaver hat, made of a pelt which he had purchased from the Mandan tribe while serving in the 43rd Regiment of the Brockenbrough Fusiliers, noting the typical blue cross-stitching of the Mandan and the tiny indentations made by the needle made from the rear claw of the hibernating Missouri mud turtle.” I do know that Bloodroot Cantons is a story, not history or nature studies.
The story-telling I have done the most of in my life is telling their own stories back to people, but in a way that ensured they could see hope and see opportunities to be powerful and smart and giving. This novel is the same kind of story-telling, except that I am much harder on myself than most of my listeners have been on me.
Hope and opportunity abound in this book, but they are tested in every reasonable and likely way I can think of. There are victories here, but every one of them will be earned as you watch. My goal is that you delight in the victories in this story, but that you also believe they really could have been won, and perhaps in some way still could be won, by people as real as you and I.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 23, 2012
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