From the front dust jacket flap: “In 1824 an explosive event on the American frontier threatened massive and bloody Indian reprisals. The little-known and long-forgotten record tells of the brutal murder of innocent, peaceful Indians, including women and children, by five white men. From this scant evidence of history Jessamyn West has fashioned an exciting and richly plotted novel of haunting meaning.” The author of this highly praised work was a woman born in the small, southeastern Indiana town of Vernon in 1902. Jessamyn West was raised Quaker and was most known for “The Friendly Persuasion”, a series of stories about a farming family in Vernon living on the banks of the Muscatatuck River. Published as a novel in 1945, it was adapted to the big screen in 1956. She followed her successful, relatively late-life, writerly beginnings with many more novels and short stories. “The Massacre at Fall Creek” was published in 1975 and found favor as a Literary Guild main selection and a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book. Too few facts about the actual history of the events West recounts are available. It is known that nine Native Americans were killed on March 22, 1864, by white settlers in Madison County on Fall Creek, at the present day site of Pendleton, Indiana, northeast of Indianapolis. It was the first documented case in which whites were convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of indigenous people under U.S. law. But a precedent was not set. Native Americans were not thereafter treated equally by the America justice system, and the outcome of this time in which they were seemed to have been covered over. Jessamyn West brought it back into the light with this compelling narrative. The author herself traveled extensively beyond her Hoosier roots. She grew up and received an education in California, where she lived near the Milhaus branch of her family - a branch which included a second cousin named Richard Nixon. Jessamyn lived in Napa Valley until her death at age 84. One of her last published books was a memoir entitled “The Life I Really Lived” (1979). [Condition: Dust jacket has some tears and crimping. Book is almost new.]
Condition: Used Very Good. Fiction. Jessamyn West. Harcourt Brace, 1975. Hardcover (First Edition), 373 pgs, 5.75 x 8.5"
