An Undisturbed Peace

October 26, 2015
Glickman (Marching to Zion) has written a sympathetic, well-executed historical novel. During the late 1820s, Abrahan Bento Sassaporta Naggar, better known as Abe, is a plucky, young Jewish bondsman working for his authoritarian Uncle Isadore at a trading post in Greensboro, N.C. Abe has immigrated to America to escape the anti-Semitic persecution he faced in London. While on his sales route into the foothills, he meets and falls in unrequited love with a mysterious older Cherokee woman named Marian, known as Dark Water among the tribe. After learning of a runaway slave named Jacob with a family connection to Marian, Abe journeys to Echota, the capital city of the Cherokee Nation, to meet him. In this tale of three ordinary, eminently relatable people, the author adeptly sets Abe’s story against the backdrop of Andrew Jackson’s shameful, greedy relocation of the Cherokees and the land grab of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The well-intentioned Abe makes two trips to Washington, D.C., and pleads the Cherokees’ cause in the halls of government, but to little avail. Glickman does an outstanding job of weaving to-
gether the narratives of her three disparate characters.

January 1, 2016

It's 1828 in North Carolina, and white settlers are taking over Indian land, white men and Indians own black slaves, and European immigrants seek prosperity in a fresh territory. Thus begins award-winning author Glickman's (One More River) fourth novel. Abrahan, who's 18, poor, and Jewish, arrives in America to work for his Uncle Isadore, a wealthy merchant. On his first trip as peddler for his uncle's wares, Abrahan meets and falls in love with Dark Water, a full- blooded Cherokee. Abe dreams of moving West with Dark Water until he discovers she still loves Jacob, a black slave she was forbidden from marrying 20 years earlier who is now presumed dead. With highly researched and descriptive writing, Glickman weaves a tale that includes the horrors of the forced relocation of Native Americans, an event now known as the Trail of Tears. VERDICT Although the pace is a bit drawn out at times, this absorbing and vivid portrait of 19th-century America will attract serious historical fiction fans.--Lorraine Ravis, Monmouth Schs., ME

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