Audiobook7 hours
Gloryland
Written by Shelton Johnson
Narrated by Shelton Johnson
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
Having patrolled Yosemite for more than two decades, author and park ranger Shelton Johnson delivers this fictionalized tribute to its healing grandeur. Born in 1863 to a sharecropping family of black and Indian blood, Elijah Yancy becomes a Buffalo Soldier in the U.S. cavalry. Ultimately finding his way to the newly created Yosemite National Park in 1903, he basks in the freedom of its pristine splendor-with little beyond mountain light, campfires, and stars. "An engaging and poetic meditation on what it means to be truly free." -Booklist
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Reviews for Gloryland
Rating: 4.035714307142857 out of 5 stars
4/5
14 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I absolutely LOVED this book! Shelton Johnson, a park ranger at Yosemite, presents this fictional memoir of an African American/Indian man named Elijah Yancy who leaves his home and family in South Carolina and ends up joining the army in the late 1800s. After travelling around the world fighting and killing those who just want freedom (a moral dilemma whose tragic irony is not lost on Elijah), his Calvary unit is assigned to patrol and protect the relatively new Yosemite National Park. Is it here that Elijah is able to fully come face-to-face with who he is and who he can be. Shelton's writing is simply superb, and you can feel his reverence for the Yosemite land in every word. There's also terrible tragedy amongst the beauty, as Elijah is repeatedly confronted by racism and violence. This is a very important book, not in the least because it tells the story of the buffalo soldiers, a sadly under-taught part of American history. My fingers are crossed that the next time I visit Yosemite, I cross paths with Ranger Johnson.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent concise lyrical writing. Very moving and emotional portrayal of racism is post-Civil War US. Beautiful "word paintings" of the grandeur of Yosemite National Park.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Elijah Yancey is a black soldier in the U S Cavalry, the 9th (late 19th, early 20th centuries) - a Buffalo Soldier as they were called. He's also a bit of a poet - very introspective. As the years of soldiering give way, so does the anger at how his race has been treated. It grows into something else - a deep relationship with his ancestors (respect really) and an even deeper understanding of God from the canyons and meadows and stars and grizzly bears of Yosemite National Park. I liked the excerpts from the "Cavalry Tactics" manual at the beginning of each chapter - gave it a necessary 'grounding'. Only someone who has lived and worked at Yosemite could portray it in such a personal and beautiful way and Johnson is that person, being a ranger at Yosemite. Makes me so want to go there and see what he (or Elijah) has seen, hear God talking like Elijah said: ...when God's talking, you shup up.