Orphans afield

by J. Arthur Eidson

The dawn of the Civil War in Unionist north-east Texas: Esker Doyle, son on Illinois farmers, and Andrew Jackson, a Kickapoo Indian and protege to a Methodist minister, are driven from their homes by secessionist vigilantes. Their flight places them in a ranging company on the western frontier, where they must confront Comanches, deserters, and themselves. A story of loss and redemption. A story of the Civil War seldom told.

225 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2017

About the author

James Arthur Eidson is a descendant of Texas pioneers. He learned of the closing of the frontier thru the stories of the old ones. The closing was not only an end of a way of life, but was the end of the wild. Eidson has worked as an ecologist & conservationist for almost 30 years. This is his first novel, & combines knowledge of history, the people & the land, & how each shapes the others. Father of three, he currently lives in Hamilton, Texas with his wife Anita and dog, Hank.

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd previously read the author's first novel and liked it quite a lot. This, his second, is more ambitious, intersecting, as it does, the world-historical events of the Indian and Civil wars. Both are biographies of a sort, the first of a single man, the second of two young men, both of the Texas territories and the peoples who inhabited them years ago.

Author Eidson, a retired range ecologist and occasional professor as well as amateur historian, makes the geography of the land come alive with vivid, informed description. Terrains become virtual characters in their own right, the human characters, Anglo and Indian, being in vital interaction with them as well as with one another.

A master of understatement, Eidson delivers his points through the words and acts of his characters. Much of it is quite funny. Some of it is powerfully poignant. All of it is sensitively, liberally humane. This is an author of heart and intelligence.

Some of us had the fortune of hearing the author read selections from both of his novels at Heirloom Books while he and his wife visited their son, himself a writer, in Chicago. So moved were we, the owner and I, that we carried on after their departure, finishing the oral reading of Orphans Afield, in tears, just this afternoon. We did our best with the accents and dialects, but to hear the author himself is an experience not to be missed. Not only does Eidson deserve reprint by a major publisher, but an audiobook would be in order as well, so long as he read it.

[Viccy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Esker Doyle and Andrew Jackson (known as Little Hand in Kickapoo) are left alone in the world when their families are murdered by vigilantes at the start of the Civil War in Texas. Northeast Texas was primarily a Unionist holdout, having been settled by families from above the Mason-Dixon line. As Esker and Andrew travel west to join a frontier regiment fighting the Comanche, they cross a large swath of the verdant Texas plains. The reader sees the land as it was before too many white men moved in and drove the buffalo and Native Americans out. As Esker and Andrew move west, the reader is transported to another time and place. Excellent place setting enhances this poignant story of loss and redemption.