Kola

by Layton Park

Northern Soldiers killed Liam’s parents and left the half white, half Chinese boy for dead. The feared Quantrill’s raiders, rescued him to fight for the racially intolerant south. To hide his Chinese roots, he changed his name and posed as an Indian scout. After the war, all Quantrill’s men were to be rounded up and hung so he joined a horse drive to Canada. Someone among the Chinese miners murdered the tax collector pitting the Chinese against the white community. Kola is forced to decide which side he will support.All events are historically accurate including the tax man’s murder, only the main characters are fictional as they weave their way through this historical western.

ebook

Published February 16, 2019

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a couple of mixed feelings at the beginning of this book, but by the end I enjoyed the reading experience. A historical fiction set in the time of the American Civil War, Kola follows young Liam, the son of a Chinese mother and an Irish father, as tragedy forces him from his home at a tender age and coincidence puts him with a band of roving Confederate soldiers. Despite his heritage. There's discussion between characters about if the war was about race or just politics or just economics and I don't have the historical background to be sure either way; this was the part I was uncertain about. That being said, I feel like Park did a good job presenting a complicated issue, giving it more nuance as the book goes on. There's layers to the racism, villains on both sides of the war. I could imagine this book possibly being a painful reading experience for people of non-white ancestry, although hopefully the fact that the main characters tend to not be white and the narrator is bi-racial will help mitigate that. It is also quite a violent book. Shootings, raiding parties, scalpings, drunken mobs, and field amputations abound. It's during the war that Liam is reinvented as part Native and given the name Kola by his friends in the hopes that as half Native he will find more acceptance than he would if he were presented as half Chinese. These conflicting stories follow Liam/Kola throughout the book as he reinvents himself in an effort to escape his past. Though Canada is not the utopia he heard it was, it is there that he finally finds peace with his history and a community to call his own. Kola is an enjoyable, well-researched read and I definitely recommend it for any historical fiction lovers.

[Diane Bator · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book from the author and had it signed!
The story itself is engaging and the main character, who is based on a real life man, went through a lot of crazy life events. Park tells Kola's story quite well and keeps the reader engaged right until the end.
One of the drawbacks to this book is there are consistency issues with Kola's name (as he does go by a couple other ones and there was one whole chapter I found confusing), a few glaring typos, as well as line spacing issues.
Aside from those, I would've given this book a strong 4/5 since it is a really interesting read!