Audiobook8 hours
Pushing the Bear: A Novel of the Trail of Tears
Written by Diane Glancy
Narrated by George Guidall, Mark Hammer, Cristine McMurdo-Wallis and
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
In 1838, thirteen thousand Cherokee were forced to leave their homeland in the Southeast and walk 900 miles to present-day Oklahoma. Hunger, cold, fatigue, and disease threatened their very survival. Their grueling relocation trek-the Trail of Tears-takes on new immediacy and meaning with this stunning work of fiction. Maritole loses not only her home and her settled life in North Carolina, but also many of the people closest to her. A chorus of voices joins hers to vividly recreate the tragic story of the Cherokee removal. Amid wrenching scenes of hardship and pain, there is the underlying strength that ultimately allowed this ancient people to endure. Diane Glancy has received many awards for her writing, including the American Book Award and the Pushcart Prize. Her luminous, poetic prose and memorable characters take on added life with this multi-voice performance by talented narrators. An interview with the author is at the conclusion of this audiobook.
Author
Diane Glancy
Diane Glancy is the author of more than twenty-five books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama. A professor emerita at Macalester College, Glancy served as a visiting professor of English at Azusa Pacific University from 2012 to 2014.
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Reviews for Pushing the Bear
Rating: 3.694444472222222 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
18 ratings1 review
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5What I loved about this book was finishing it and being free to go on to my next book. I came close to giving this 1 star but I just couldn’t because I loved the map on the inside covers and the maps that are at the front of each chapter, showing the route as the Cherokee progressed, and I like that the Cherokee language is used at times throughout the book.I’m very interested in the Trail of Tears but I might have preferred a non-fiction book or at the least a much better novel. I will not be reading the sequel, Pushing the Bear: After the Trail of Tears. If not for my real world book club I would have taken a look at the information about the Cherokee oral/written language and then abandoned the book; there HAVE to be better books about this subject out there.Reading this was a slog. It was tedious when it shouldn’t be and I just couldn’t care that much about the characters when I should have. Sometimes I mildly enjoyed this as I was reading but I never got lost in the book.I often like books such as this, with alternating narrators, but here some of the narrators seem to be there just to give the reader the history and background information about the removal. While I’m interested in the history and was glad to learn more about it, it’s didn’t make for a scintillating novel. The book is written in short little sections so it’s way too easy to put down the book, sometimes a helpful thing, but for me I’m not so sure it was with this particular book. The account felt very jerky; there was no good flow to the story.I got really irritated when the conflict between the Cherokee and the European whites was presented as too evenly at fault. Yes, it was good to see sympathetic white European soldiers and not perfect Cherokee, but nope, the forced removal wouldn’t have happened without the whites coveting the Cherokee’s land. The Cherokee lived in cabins, had possessions, and were farmers, not at all nomadic by that time. Sorry, not evenly at fault at all. Not even close!I did learn a lot. The Trail of Tears was much different than I’d envisioned. Many things struck me, including the fact that the Native Americans forced from their farms were also forced to pay landowners/farmers for passage over their lands. We American immigrants have a crazy history, which I suppose it just part of the overall crazy human history.So, I’m glad I’m done and delighted to move on. I would like to read an excellent book or more, fiction and/or non-fiction, about The Trail of Tears. If any Goodreads’ members can recommend any, I’d appreciate it. I can’t recommend this book to anyone, but I’m curious about what my other seven book club members will say about this book.