Thursday, Oct 14, 2021, Charlotte Writers Club North with Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle in conversation with Main Street Books' Beth Helfrich.
Book Synopsis from Project Muse:
Nineteen-year-old Cowney Sequoyah yearns to escape his hometown of Cherokee, North Carolina, in the heart of the Smoky Mountains. When a summer job at Asheville's luxurious Grove Park Inn and Resort brings him one step closer to escaping the hills that both cradle and suffocate him, he sees it as an opportunity. With World War II raging in Europe, the inn is the temporary home of Axis diplomats and their families, who are being held as prisoners of war. Soon, Cowney's refuge becomes a cage when the daughter of one of the residents goes missing and he finds himself accused of abduction and murder. Even As We Breathe invokes the elements of bone, blood, and flesh as Cowney navigates difficult social, cultural, and ethnic divides. After leaving the seclusion of the Cherokee reservation, he is able to explore a future free from the consequences of his family's choices to construct a new worldview, for a time. However, prejudice and persecution in the white world of the resort eventually compel Cowney to free himself from larger forces that hold him back as he struggles to unearth evidence of his innocence and clear his name.
From ECU News Service:
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle is an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and resides in Qualla, NC with her husband, Evan, and sons Ross and Charlie. She holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary. Her debut novel, Even As We Breathe, was released by the University Press of Kentucky in 2020 and is a finalist for the Weatherford Award and named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020. Her first novel manuscript, Going to Water, is the winner of the Morning Star Award for Creative Writing from the Native American Literature Symposium (2012) and a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction (2014).
Clapsaddle’s work has appeared in Yes! Magazine, Lit Hub, Smoky Mountain Living Magazine, South Writ Large, and The Atlantic. After serving as executive director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, Annette returned to teaching at Swain County High School. She is the former co-editor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and serves on the board of trustees for the North Carolina Writers Network.
Clapsaddle now teaches at a high school with a student population that's 30% Native. She balanced her classes in English and Cherokee studies by writing her novel, Even As We Breathe. In its review, Publishers Weekly called the book "a lush debut, and "an astonishing addition to WWII and Native American literature" when it came out in September. Clapsaddle is quick to acknowledge the timing feels somewhat strange.
"It's bizarre to have a book called Even As We Breathe now when we're making sure we don't breathe on anyone," she observes.
Even As We Breathe is filled with nuances specific to this place and this tribe, from the smell of pine sap and sourwood to the hymns sung in Cherokee at the reservation Methodist church. Clapsaddle was determined with this novel to write characters her students might know in real life.
"For me, that's what I set out to do, is give my students a story." She tears up, unexpectedly. One of her students reported he never thought he'd see so much of himself in a character as he did with Cowney. "He said, 'People just don't write about people like us,' " she says.
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The Cherokee Indians have lived in Western North Carolina for centuries. They have endured both hard times and good times in a world that changed dramatically around them. Author Roy Cantrell lived and worked among these Native Americans, collecting stories of the people he knew and loved and their ways of life that may not survive the onslaught of technology, casinos, and tourism.
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Tommy Orange has written a stunning novel that grapples with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and profound spirituality, and with a plague of addiction, abuse, and suicide. This is the book that everyone is talking about right now, and it's destined to be a classic.
Firekeeper's Daughter by
Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. She dreams of a fresh start at college, but when family tragedy strikes, Daunis puts her future on hold to look after her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother Levi's hockey team. Yet even as Daunis falls for Jamie, she senses the dashing hockey star is hiding something. Everything comes to light when Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, thrusting her into an FBI investigation of a lethal new drug. Reluctantly, Daunis agrees to go undercover, drawing on her knowledge of chemistry and Ojibwe traditional medicine to track down the source. But the search for truth is more complicated than Daunis imagined, exposing secrets and old scars. At the same time, she grows concerned with an investigation that seems more focused on punishing the offenders than protecting the victims. Now, as the deceptions--and deaths--keep growing, Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she'll go for her community, even if it tears apart the only world she's ever known.
The Night Watchman by
WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WASHINGTON POST, AMAZON, NPR, CBS SUNDAY MORNING, KIRKUS, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF 2020 Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich's grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman. Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new "emancipation" bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn't about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a "termination" that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans "for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run"? Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice's shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn't been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life. Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice's best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice. In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.
Read alikes from Novelist Plus .... If you enjoyed Even As We Breathe, check these books out.
Maud's Line by Margaret Verble
Reason: Although murder mysteries propel the plots in these own voices debut novels, both share a gentle tone while exploring the worlds of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (Maud's Line) and North Carolina's Eastern Band of Cherokee (Even As We Breathe). -- Michael Shumate
All the Little Hopes by Leah Weiss
Reason: Similar plots are featured in these intricately plotted historical novels, where young characters come of age one summer during World War II after they learn their North Carolina communities are housing Nazi POWs. -- Michael Shumate
Prudence by David Treuer
Reason: These books have the theme "facing racism"; the genre "literary fiction"; the subjects "native american men," "racism," and "indian reservations"; and have characters that are culturally diverse.
When Two Feathers fell from the sky - Margaret Verble
Reason: These books are lush, own voices, and leisurely paced, and they have the theme "facing racism"; the genre "historical fiction"; the subjects "racism," "cherokee indians," and "cherokee women"; and have characters that are well-developed.
For more books similar to these check out Novelist Plus Database
Book Discussion Questions
