Dawn Land - Hardcover

Bruchac, Joseph

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 155591134X ISBN 13: 9781555911348

Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing, 1993

Synopsis

Young Hunter, accompanied by his faithful dogs and a secret weapon sets out to confront the evil that threatens the people of Dawn Land.

About this title

About the Author

Joseph Bruchac, coauthor of The Keepers of the Earth series, is a nationally acclaimed Native American storyteller and writer who has authored more than 70 books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for adults and children. He lives in upstate New York.

From Kirkus Reviews

Bruchac's first novel--based on Native American legends, tall tales, and myths, and especially suitable as a YA--follows a young warrior on a vision quest into the unknown. The transformation of oral tribal lore into fiction can be metronomic at times, but more often Bruchac (the story collection Turtle Meat, 1992, etc.) finds an incantatory rhythm appropriate to this North American version of magical realism. Young Hunter lives in Only People Village after the last Ice Age some 10,000 years ago. Only People Village is one of 14 allied villages in The Dawn Land, and Young Hunter comes of age learning of the Great Ones who once lived in the sky and listening to Oldest Talker and Bear Talker, who predicts Young Hunter's future: ``Now I see that you are going to have to walk a long way.'' So Young Hunter sets off, moving among the ``powerful beings in the forest.'' Bruchac begins to lay on lore, stories, and names as Young Hunter learns to use the Long Thrower, a mystical weapon of peace, and lives in myth: ``With the story in his mind, Young Hunter ran. He ran with the story.'' Finally, after many an interesting or tedious episode, Young Hunter reaches the new land and the People of the Long Lodges. He discovers, classically, that the other is not always the enemy, and returns with ``too great a weapon to be used by people whose minds might not be straight.'' Yet another Joseph Campbell-like hero with a thousand faces, Young Hunter's prehistoric quest--by now almost a subgenre of modern letters--gives Bruchac a chance to patch together all sorts of Native American materials in an attempt, mostly successful, to re-create human life in America long before Europeans arrived. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 155591134X
• ISBN 13: 9781555911348
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 332