Canaan

Canaan fills a vast canvas. Its points of reference are Richmond in the throes of Reconstruction; the trading floors of Wall Street, where men makes fortunes speculating on the war s consequences; a Virginia plantation, where the ruin of the South is written in wrenching detail; and the Great Plains, where the splendidly arrogant George Custer rides to his fate against Sitting Bull s warriors. This is the story of America over twenty years of its most turbulent history. The characters are black, white, red, ex-Union, and ex-Confederate; and the principal narrator is a Santee woman, She Goes Before, who marries an ex-slave. Through her eyes we witness the hanging of her father by whites in the mass execution of 1863, Red Cloud s banquet with President Grant, and that final confrontation on the bluffs above the Little Bighorn. McCaig s extensive research is revealed in the book s rich historical detail and revisionist perspective. Black life in Reconstruction-era Virginia is portrayed particularly well. Library Journal"