NEITHER
REBEL NOR TORY: Hanyost Schuyler & The Siege of Fort
Stanwix Michael
Cooney, Wilderness Hill Books, 2009, $18.95, pb, 279pp, 9781442156036
Readers
glancing at a summary of Michael Cooney's novel Neither
Rebel Nor Tory—the
story of Hanyost Schuyler, a young man in upstate New York in 1765,
caught between the British and the growing rebellion against their
rule—will doubtless recall Walter Edmonds' 1936 classic Drums
Along the Mohawk,
a bestselling work of historical fiction set in the same scene. And
the two books have one other major similarity: they're both
rock-solid narratives that are absorbingly good to read.
Hanyost
Schuyler briefly stepped onto the stage of history in 1777 when he
was captured by American forces and sentenced to death as a traitor
and spy. His personal familiarity with the Mohawks of the region
prompted General Benedict Arnold to spare him—and use him, sending
him as a messenger to British-held Fort Stanwix under orders to
exaggerate the size of the force Arnold was bringing to assault the
fort. His personal story (he was rumored to be an imbecile) seems at
first no more promising for the hero of a historical novel than
Arnold's own, but Cooney's vast research—and the surprisingly
puckish sense of humor he brings to almost every chapter of Neither
Rebel Nor Tory (readers
may recall the near-surgical absence of humor in Drums
Along the Mohawk)
make this a thoroughly enjoyable book, full of memorable characters
and a persuasively sympathetic take on the culture of the Mohawks as
they faced the crucible of their existence. Strongly recommended.
-- Steve
Donoghue
Historical
Novels Review
or
$2.99 at Kindle
*
I
thought that The River That Flows Both Ways was
excellent. I'll be honest here-- when I saw that the voice of the
story was a young Indian boy I was at first like "oh, no".
There have been so many books written from a view point like that,
one that , I personally, would find I have a really hard time
capturing successfully. But I was put in the mind of some of
the accounts of Tisquantum (Squanto) and I though you did a very good
job of capturing his outsider, yet a bit on the inside voice. I got a
thrill out of seeing so many characters I had encountered in my own
readings, like Isaac Jogues, Johannes Megalopensis and, of course,
Harmen. It was interesting how your own take on Megalopensis was very
different than what I came away with-- then again, as he is the one
relating the story to us, maybe he's mot a very reliable narrator. I
got a kick out of the real life Megalopensis's account of the Mohawk,
because he seems so cranky and judgmental as opposed to van den
Bogaert. I've batted around for years doing a graphic novel take
of his account of New Netherland as a companion book to Journey
into Mohawk Country. The fanboy in me wishes that there had been
cameos of Willem Thomassen and Jeronimus de la Croix.
Of
course, I knew how the story was to end, and it still saddened me
when it occurred. Particularly because of the fate of his family, who
didn't factor into my depiction of his adventures at all. At least
Harmen got to go out heroically, thanks to the mad Jesuit priest.
I've often wondered about the flimsiness of the prison that held him,
as you mentioned on your blog, and in fact, I wonder, given the
sketchiness of the records of the period if his demise on the ice
wasn't a concoction created by some bribed guards who let him go.
--George
O'Connor, author of the graphic novel Journey
into Mohawk Country
or
$2.99 at Kindle
I
have been interested in the Roxalana Druse case for a long time and I
found this book to be a very interesting new take on an old story.
Mr. Cooney makes a good case that Roxalana Druse was NOT guilty of
murdering her husband but was protecting the identity of the real
murderer. She never did admit the crime and people in Herkimer
say that her ghost still haunts the old jail (now closed) and the
courthouse. Unfortunately, she didn’t get the kind of defense
attorney that Casey Anthony or O. J. Simpson did, and ended up
getting executed. This book is really two books. The first is a novel
claiming to tell what really happened back in 1885. The second part
is a history of all the murders in the county and that’s also very
interesting. Many of those murders also figure into the fiction part
of the book.
-
Jim Murphy, Old Kinderhook Review
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