Sherman Alexie meets William Gibson. Louise Erdrich meets Franz Kafka. Leslie Marmon Silko meets Philip K. Dick. However you might want to put it, this is Native American fiction in a whole new world. A surrealistic revisiting of the Cherokee Removal, Riding the Trail of Tears takes us to north Georgia in the near future, into a virtual-reality tourist compound where customers ride the Trail of Tears, and into the world of Tallulah Wilson, a Cherokee woman who works there. When several tourists lose consciousness inside the ride, employees and customers at the compound come to believe, naturally, that a terrorist attack is imminent. Little does Tallulah know that Cherokee Little People have taken up residence in the virtual world and fully intend to change the ride’s programming to suit their own point of view. Told by a narrator who knows all but can hardly be trusted, in a story reflecting generations of experience while recalling the events in a single day of Tallulah’s life, this funny and poignant tale revises American history even as it offers a new way of thinking, both virtual and very real, about the past for both Native Americans and their Anglo counterparts.

Sherman Alexie meets William Gibson. Louise Erdrich meets Franz Kafka. Leslie Marmon Silko meets Philip K. Dick. However you might want to put it, this is Native American fiction in a whole new world. A surrealistic revisiting of the Cherokee Removal, Riding the Trail of Tears takes us to north Georgia in the near future, into a virtual-reality tourist compound where customers ride the Trail of Tears, and into the world of Tallulah Wilson, a Cherokee woman who works there. When several tourists lose consciousness inside the ride, employees and customers at the compound come to believe, naturally, that a terrorist attack is imminent.

It is June first and twelve-year-old Mary does not really understand what is happening: she does not understand the hatred and greed of the white men who are forcing her Cherokee family out of their home in New Echota, Georgia, capital of the Cherokee Nation, and trying to steal what few things they are allowed to take with them, she does not understand why a soldier killed her grandfather--and she certainly does not understand how she, her sister, and her mother, are going to survive the 1000 mile trip to the lands west of the Mississippi.

The government made us more promises than I can remember, but they never kept but one; the government promised to take our land and kill the buffalo, and they did. Riding to Remember explores the tragic history of the American Indian: from the usurping of their homes and land, the erosion of their customs and culture by European immigrants, to the current political climate. A warning--for those who do not learn from history, are destined to repeat it. More than that, though, Riding to Remember is a celebration of a proud and powerful people. May they never be forgotten. About the Author The descendant of a full-blood Cherokee, Jerry Shadow Wolf Davis has a vested interest in preserving the memories of his ancestors. A founder of the Trail of Tears Commemorative Motorcycle Ride(R), he works tirelessly to educate others, ensuring the history of the Native American Indian is not forgotten.

Traditional and modern stories by the Cherokee Indians of North Carolina reflect the tribe's religious beliefs and values, observations of animals and nature, and knowledge of history.

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“Richly detailed and well-researched,” this story of one Native American chief’s resistance to American expansionism “unfolds like a political thriller” (Publishers Weekly). Toward the Setting Sun chronicles one of the most significant but least explored periods in American history—the nineteenth century forced removal of Native Americans from their lands—through the story of Chief John Ross, who came to be known as the Cherokee Moses. Son of a Scottish trader and a quarter-Cherokee woman, Ross was educated in white schools and was only one-eighth Indian by blood. But as Cherokee chief in the mid-nineteenth century, he would guide the tribe through its most turbulent period. The Cherokees’ plight lay at the epicenter of nearly all the key issues facing America at the time: western expansion, states’ rights, judicial power, and racial discrimination. Clashes between Ross and President Andrew Jackson raged from battlefields and meeting houses to the White House and Supreme Court. As whites settled illegally on the Nation’s land, the chief steadfastly refused to sign a removal treaty. But when a group of renegade Cherokees betrayed their chief and negotiated their own agreement, Ross was forced to lead his people west. In one of America’s great tragedies, thousands died during the Cherokees’ migration on the Trail of Tears. “Powerful and engaging . . . By focusing on the Ross family, Hicks brings narrative energy and original insight to a grim and important chapter of American life.” —Jon Meacham