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Title: The Firekeeper: A Narrative of the Eastern Frontier by Robert Moss ISBN: 0-312-85738-1 Publisher: Forge Pub. Date: July, 1995 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Dreams Along the Mohawk
Comment: A wonderful book by a singularly marvellous author! The best two books (along with FIRE ALONG THE SKY) I've read in years. As rich as any historical novel ever written. Travel to a vanished world in upstate New York for a few hours. And discover that Colonial America was a vibrant and violent time. America's first frontier--Too bad it's overshadowed by our preoccupation with the 19th-century Western mythology. The 18th century was far more fascinating!
Rating: 5
Summary: THE FIREKEEPER is "the dream" of Sir William Johnson.
Comment: In the dry, often dull, pages of thousands of eighteenth century documents, the researcher and student of history meets--in his or her studies of upstate New York--the names of characters who shaped the cultural and geographic boundaries of the lands bordering and expanding beyond the Mohawk River into the thick forests of the eighteenth century western frontier. Principal among those names is that of Sir William Johnson and his intricately woven web of clients, agents, military personnel, merchants, commissaries, politicians, tenants, and tradesmen, all backdropped against the powerful confederacy of the Six Nations. In THE FIREKEEPER, Robert Moss plunges beneath the carefully penned words of conferences, negotiations, land deals, and the giving and receiving of thousands of belts and strings of wampum and chests of gifts to find the phrase, the inuendo, the pause, the missing sentence that allows one to grasp the beauty and power of the raw courage, stamina, and charisma of the men and women who were the real heroes of the New York frontier. William Johnson held the legal responsibility for the negotiation of Indian affairs for the Six Nations and proved the extraordinary confidence and credit in which he was held by the Six Nations in his care and use of the magnificent symbols of Indian power and authority--the belts, the sacred calumets, and the dreams. In the dreaming culture of the Six Nations, William Johnson was caught up in a delicate balance between the magical world of spirit and soul in which he donned the antlers of the forest stag and the competitive white world where wills and cultures clashed in battle and on paper.
Woven in and among the threads of the fascinating story of THE FIREKEEPER is the even more powerful story of the women in William Johnson's world--the young Palatine girl who pursued her dreams across the sea from bondage to the purchased freedom of a frontier pulsing with the clash of desire and spirit, of the fusing of the sacred and profane in a forest peopled with refugees from her own country and with the magical dreaming women of power of the Six Nations, of the Mohawks, women with names like Island Woman and Sparrow, all of whom would share in the romance and spirit of William Johnson's world, molded from the dreams of many cultures, a magical journey of spirit and soul brought to life by Robert Moss through the pages of THE FIREKEEPER.
Rating: 3
Summary: Naaaaaah!
Comment: A relatively lifeless rendering of an exciting and little known part of American history, this tale recounts the activities of one William Johnson, of Irish stock, who made his way to the English colonies in North America and settled in New York during the 18th century. There he became a friend and confidante of the Mohawk Iroquois, among the most fearsome native American tribes, noted for the bloody tortures they administered to their captives (and their more humane policy of adopting some captives into their ranks), as well as their cannibalistic tendencies. By the time this tale occurs, these Indians are clearly on the defensive. Though remaining a fierce presence in the woodlands of upper New York, their numbers are shrinking (due to "white" diseases like smallpox and the creeping impact of European settlement). While Johnson establishes himself as a "friend" of this tribe and other Indians, he never seems to rise above dancing and shmoozing with them while getting their braves good and drunk. At the same time he proves himself an utter cad in the cold and high-handed way he treats the escaped indentured servant who early on seems to have been the love of his life but is ultimately reduced to little more than housekeeper and mother of his acknowledged children. As a counterpoint to all this, we follow the tale of a Mohawk shaman woman and her offspring as they commune with their sisters, guide the tribe through the travails of dealing with the whites, and have various outer body experiences which never quite mesh with the larger tale of colonial intrigue (which seems quite pale itself) during the French and Indian wars. Overall, Johnson is a relatively unlikable character and what he does, besides the epic womanizing and hondling with the Indians, seems decidedly unimpressive: a single stand with superior forces in the wilderness against a more professional but over-extended French force which results in the "surprising" defeat of the French and the turning of the tide of the colonial war. Not much action here, little characterization, lots of speculation about the dream reality of the native Americans -- and little else. They bill this as Volume I. As far as I'm concerned, we'd all be better off if Mr. Moss called it a book here, and went on to something else. -- Stuart W. Mirsky
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Title: The Interpreter: A Story of Two Worlds by Robert Moss ISBN: 031285739X Publisher: Forge Pub. Date: March, 1997 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Conscious Dreaming : A Spiritual Path for Everyday Life by Robert Moss ISBN: 051788710X Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 07 May, 1996 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: She Who Dreams: A Journey into Healing Through Dreamwork by Wanda Easter Burch, Robert Moss ISBN: 1577314263 Publisher: New World Library Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Fire Along the Sky by Robert Moss ISBN: 031207011X Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: February, 1992 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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