Far Stones: A Novel - Softcover

This book began with happening upon S. C. Gwynne's Pulitzer finalist Empire of the Summer Moon about the rise and fall of the Comanche Indians and Quanah Parker, their last and greatest chief. I had long been percolating an improbable notion about the western frontier and early baseball, and Gwynne's book was the catalyst to get the story and characters going--especially regarding the Buffalo soldiers and how often Indian capture of white youths ages nine to eleven actually happened. However, there are hardly any specific references to blacks being taken and raised as members of a tribe. As a youth in Kentucky, I acquired a keen awareness of the confrontations between the American Indians and westward-bound frontiersmen and settlers. At age eleven I was deeply moved by seeing the pageant Unto These Hills in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee about the Cherokee Trail of Tears. What also informs this novel is a rueful awareness of being a white Woodson, whose grandfather of eleven generations ago, Dr. John Woodson, arrived at Jamestown in 1619, and in 1620 acquired six of the first twenty Negro slaves brought to this country. This knowledge has left me particularly sensitive to issues of race, and in ways both conscious and unconscious prompted my temerity to write a novel whose protagonists are boys of color.

Loren Woodson spent his youth in small-town Kentucky, fascinated with the American Indians and the westward-bound frontiersmen and settlers. His family relocated to Southern California where he received his education and became an M.D. psychiatrist. He was hooked on baseball from when he first caught one. His devotion to history informed his deep research into the land and the issues of the clashing cultures in 19c Texas. As an 11th generation descendant of a Jamestown first family who owned slaves, he is particularly sensitive to issues of race and culture. He lives with his artist wife near their children and grandchildren in Santa Monica, California, where he plays brass and woodwinds and coaches Little League. His previous novel is The Passion of Maryam (Plain View Press, 2007).