The Night BirdsThe Night Birds
Title rated 4.05 out of 5 stars, based on 9 ratings(9 ratings)
Book, 2007
Current format, Book, 2007, , No Longer Available.Book, 2007
Current format, Book, 2007, , No Longer Available. Offered in 0 more formats“We all set our sights on the Great American Novel. . . . [Thomas Maltman] comes impressively close to laying his hands on the grail.”—Madison Smartt Bell, The Boston Globe
“Maltman’s prose and pacing flow from an expert hand. . . . His gaze is unflinching and balanced. . . . And while there is much loss in the novel, in the end there is salvation.”—Robin Vidimos, Denver Post
“Maltman’s writing is most lucid when he explores the German folklore, Dakota mysticism, and pioneer spirituality that shape his characters’ understanding of their own harsh world.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Thomas Maltman’s debut novel, The Night Birds, soars and sings like a feathered angel.”—Chicago Sun-Times
“[Maltman] excels at giving even his most harrowing scenes an understated realism and at painting characters who are richly, sometimes disturbingly human. The novel sustains its tension right to the moment it ends.”—Publishers Weekly (starred)
“[A] flawless sense of history marked by its most revealing—and harrowing—details.”—Booklist
The intertwining story of three generations of German immigrants to the Midwest—their clashes with slaveholders, the Dakota uprising and its aftermath—is seen through the eyes of young Asa Senger, named for an uncle killed by an Indian friend. It is the unexpected appearance of Asa’s aunt Hazel, institutionalized since shortly after the mass hangings of thirty-eight Dakota warriors in Mankato in 1862, that reveals to him that the past is as close as his own heartbeat.
Thomas Maltman lives in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. This is his first novel.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
The summer of 1876 is a time of fear and uncertainty for young Asa Senger and his German immigration family. Vast clouds of locusts descend once more on the Great Plains, stripping the land bare. The James/Younger gang, a band of murderous thieves, is rumored to be riding north into the area. And all the while, Asa can sense lurking just under the surface of his daily life something appalling that his parents will never speak of.
A mysterious aunt named Hazel, confined for years in an asylum, arrives bearing with her secrets about the now banished Dakota Indians whom everyone else wants to forget. Their family's relationship with these onetime neighbors and friends has shaped her life, and theirs. Her arrival will propel the story into the past, as far back as the Senger family's initial settlement in and later flight from slave-holding Missouri, a place of superstition and folklore. Interweaving Grimms' Tales, the abolitionist movement, country healers and water-witches, as well as Dakota ethnography and heritage, she tells the story of their epic journey.
Past and present are intertwined in this narrative, as Asa discovers that violence cannot stay buried when the dark history that his family has fought to keep secret is revealed. The past, Asa is about to find out, is as close as his own heartbeat.
For Asa, the summer of 1876 was a time of fear and uncertainty, when his mysterious aunt, Hazel, arrives and turns his entire life upside-down with her tales and secrets from the past.
For Asa the summer of 1876 was a time of fear and uncertainty, when his mysterious aunt, Hazel, arrives and turns his entire life upside-down with her tales and secrets from the past.
“Maltman’s prose and pacing flow from an expert hand. . . . His gaze is unflinching and balanced. . . . And while there is much loss in the novel, in the end there is salvation.”—Robin Vidimos, Denver Post
“Maltman’s writing is most lucid when he explores the German folklore, Dakota mysticism, and pioneer spirituality that shape his characters’ understanding of their own harsh world.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Thomas Maltman’s debut novel, The Night Birds, soars and sings like a feathered angel.”—Chicago Sun-Times
“[Maltman] excels at giving even his most harrowing scenes an understated realism and at painting characters who are richly, sometimes disturbingly human. The novel sustains its tension right to the moment it ends.”—Publishers Weekly (starred)
“[A] flawless sense of history marked by its most revealing—and harrowing—details.”—Booklist
The intertwining story of three generations of German immigrants to the Midwest—their clashes with slaveholders, the Dakota uprising and its aftermath—is seen through the eyes of young Asa Senger, named for an uncle killed by an Indian friend. It is the unexpected appearance of Asa’s aunt Hazel, institutionalized since shortly after the mass hangings of thirty-eight Dakota warriors in Mankato in 1862, that reveals to him that the past is as close as his own heartbeat.
Thomas Maltman lives in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. This is his first novel.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
The summer of 1876 is a time of fear and uncertainty for young Asa Senger and his German immigration family. Vast clouds of locusts descend once more on the Great Plains, stripping the land bare. The James/Younger gang, a band of murderous thieves, is rumored to be riding north into the area. And all the while, Asa can sense lurking just under the surface of his daily life something appalling that his parents will never speak of.
A mysterious aunt named Hazel, confined for years in an asylum, arrives bearing with her secrets about the now banished Dakota Indians whom everyone else wants to forget. Their family's relationship with these onetime neighbors and friends has shaped her life, and theirs. Her arrival will propel the story into the past, as far back as the Senger family's initial settlement in and later flight from slave-holding Missouri, a place of superstition and folklore. Interweaving Grimms' Tales, the abolitionist movement, country healers and water-witches, as well as Dakota ethnography and heritage, she tells the story of their epic journey.
Past and present are intertwined in this narrative, as Asa discovers that violence cannot stay buried when the dark history that his family has fought to keep secret is revealed. The past, Asa is about to find out, is as close as his own heartbeat.
For Asa, the summer of 1876 was a time of fear and uncertainty, when his mysterious aunt, Hazel, arrives and turns his entire life upside-down with her tales and secrets from the past.
For Asa the summer of 1876 was a time of fear and uncertainty, when his mysterious aunt, Hazel, arrives and turns his entire life upside-down with her tales and secrets from the past.
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