Hatrack River: Seventh Son

Seventh Son, by Orson Scott Card, 1987

Seventh Son is a serious reality bender. Orson Scott Card, who has only taken me into the future in the past (!) has now in the present taken me deep into the past, America's own past, fictioning a world in which the fundamentals of what we call history have been altered into a different set of assumptions. So far, the arc-bending has seemed interesting, intriguing, but ancillary to the exciting story itself. I wonder if in other books in the series the altered history becomes an issue in itself.

Set in the late 1700s (I think), in the "Hio" river valley, the book speaks directly to me, as someone whose ancestors traveled to and settled in the Ohio valley region in those years. Other place names are evocative--Wobbish perhaps for Wabash, for example. Whites are moving into the area, breaking ground, cutting trees, making towns. The character Taleswapper observes,

"All the country between the Hio and the Wobbish was being settled sparsely but evenly, and even now, from his perch atop a willow at the crest of a rise, Taleswappper could see three dozen cookfires sending pillars of smoke straight up into the cold autumn air. And in every direction, great swatches of forest had been cleared, the land plowed, crops planted, tended, harvested, so that where once great trees had shielded the earth from the sky's eye, now the stubbled soil was naked, waiting for the winter to cover its shame."

On one of the cleared patches lives the Miller family, Alvin and Faith Miller and their 14 (13 living) children, have made a home. One of the boys, also named Alvin, is their seventh son--of a seventh son, since Alvin Senior is also a seventh son. In Seventh Son, most of the people follow olden ways of hexes and spells and subtle psychic powers. Makers can make things happen in certain ways. Torches can see the spirits and secrets of people. The power is present in all, but strong in some. It is strong in the Miller family. Alvin Junior is a Maker. Even as a child, he tied knots that stayed tied, kept the roaches out of his bed by asking, and cut stone so it would split smoothly.

Alvin the Maker is set up in an epic battle against the Unmaker. Unmaking lurks at the shadows of Alvin's life. When the Unmaker presence looms, Alvin makes things--little baskets, repair of a wall, even a hayrick--something to push back the shadows. Because of the circumstances of his birth, Alvin has a protector, a Torch who watches out for him and changes the terms of his danger. At one point, a huge beam falls right where Alvin is standing, but he is unharmed. It is a miracle.

But, is it a miracle of God? That's the question for the preacher, Thrower. He sees the magic/power surrounding Alvin as being from the Devil. Thrower torments Alvin and is tormented by him. Alvin is far beyond the preacher's theology, but Thrower sees Alvin as beneath. This is a fundamental conflict in the book. The reader is drawn to wonder if Thrower is misled about a spirit who visits him clothed as an angel of God. Indeed, on whose side is God?

Seventh Son is the set-up book. We meet and begin to love Alvin. We start to know the players in his story. But, at the end of the book, although his life's work has yet to begin, the foreshadowing certainly has. I look forward to miracles and horrors, beauty and terror, certainty and risk. Can't wait.

Ender's Game is the only other book by O.S. Card that I've read, and I thought it was terrific. But it was set in a somewhat alien future. I was an outsider to the action. Seventh Son is in and of my own place, my own Appalachian homeland, the migration of my own people. I see remnants of the primordial pre-Colombian landscape everywhere I look in Vinton County, Ohio, where I live. I think this is part of the reason this book drew me in so quickly (by page 12, not kidding).

It is such an American story. Taleswapper has swapped stories with Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and many iconic historical figures, although they appear in unexpected places and contexts. Taleswapper asks people he visits to write in his journal the most important thing they have ever made. Taleswapper says about Franklin,

"I said to him, Ben, what's the most important thing you ever made?...and Ben said, 'The only thing I ever truly made was Americans.' Old Ben figured ...names divided us up into Virginians, and Rhode Islanders, into Whites and Reds...Old Ben knew that if people could once start thinking of themselves as Americans, we'd become a nation. So he started using that word in everything he wrote. Poor Richard's Almanac was full of talk about Americans this and Americans that."

This is great stuff, twining the larger context of America as a nation into this tale of Makers and Unmakers. I can't wait to read more.

I highly recommend this book, but if your Christianity is rigid, you should stay away from it. It's for you, and good for you, but not if you want to stay the same.

Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Treasure Island. Pirates. Booty. Cutlasses. Danger. Double-crossing. That’s about all there is to say about Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale of adventure on the high seas. But, of course, being me, I can say much, much more. Last night I was at a restaurant waiting for Chinese food to arrive at my table. I started jotting down words called to mind by this book: fast, roller coaster (and rolling sea), terrifying (even when I already knew the ending), gruesome, dark. Treasure Island is a children’s book through and through, but it is a terribly dark vision, a sort of bleak, godless Narnia.

[Learn about Stevenson at http://www.online-literature.com/stevenson/ or at http://www.robert-louis-stevenson.org/.]

Young Jack Hawkins works and lives at his parents’ inn. He becomes involved with pirates when a mysterious guest comes to stay--to hide there. Eventually, Jack becomes the owner of a treasure map--a map of Treasure Island. Only a few other people know about the map and the island, but each of them wants that map pretty bad. Jack works through the unfailingly honorable Doctor and Squire (although the squire is a bit gullible) and comes to set sail on the Hispaniola with his friends and the motley crew (surely this is the original motley crew). I’m not going to give away too much of the plot here. Go get the book. It’s a quick read, so read it--and read it aloud to anyone between 8 and 13 years old.

The pace of the book is masterful--in a sense, tidal. Huge waves of action come inexorably at you and then ebb away not to disappear but to gather strength for another assault of the beach. Prior to the sea journey, the pirates appear just one, briefly, then another, then two or three, like an ongoing tide themselves until the book and the Hispaniola’s honest crew are totally swamped with pirates. This breath-catching pace was aided and abetted by Stevenson’s able use of foreshadowing. A character expressed and then dismissed a doubt. Another character was just a bit off the norm. A name was dropped, a feature was mentioned. The sense of danger and doom coming in wave after wave began on about page 1 and ended on about page 296 (of 298). No let up.

Stevenson also draws characters and creates images that are striking and original. Ben Gunn, ghostly and odd. The ship marooned up a river and laying on its side. Guns sticking into the portals of the tiny fort. Dead bodies lying on a blood-drenched deck. The star of the menagerie, though, is certainly the pirate captain Long John Silver. I don’t know the provenance of pirate characters, but surely all pirates since have borne a debt to Long John Silver. Shaggy-haired, peg-legged, parrot squawking on shoulder, and above all so two-faced that he almost has no face at all--he’s elusive in all of his outrageousness. Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow is the best portrayal of Long John Silver that I can imagine. He has that same unctuousness, slipperiness. However, Jack Sparrow does seem to develop loyalties. He has a side to be on. Not Long John Silver. He is ever and only on his own side.

I was intrigued by pirate images. Peter Pan’s Captain Hook seems to draw greatly from Stevenson’s character, except missing a hand instead of a leg. Depp’s Captain Sparrow seems to be a direct descendant. When anyone thinks of “pirate” they must surely envision some amalgamation of these three. Kidnapped is next on my reading list. What pirate will that book reveal? It struck me that the Hook/Silver pirate is sort of a personified dragon (or vice versa). The dragon symbolizes mindless greed, mindless amassing of whatever is the chosen item--but it is often treasure. There is no life of the heart. It is not a “feeling” life.

Only the mid-book switch of narrators is awkward in this book--it even makes for clunky chapter titles. All of a sudden two chapters are first-person narrated by the Doctor instead of by Jack Hawkins, who narrates the rest of the book. I wish Stevenson had found another answer to getting out the doctor’s experiences while Jack is absent. Otherwise, this book is rapidly excellent.

At least there are no token women in this book--no blonde-of-the-month for a perfunctory romance. Except for one scene, this book is all male. The non-token woman is Jack’s mother, who shows great bravery and determination early in the book. She is a warrior in defense of her inn and her boy. Romance can so muck up a good adventure story. Look what it does to Depp’s Jack Sparrow!

A high recommend for this book for children and adults both. Read it before your next Pirates of the Caribbean excursion and you won’t be sorry.

NOTE OF SCHIZOPHRENIA: How did the same man who wrote Treasure Island, Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde, and Kidnapped also write the insipid A Child’s Garden of Verses?

SIDE BAR: I am especially intrigued by Treasure Island now that I have begun writing one of my own. For example, at one point the idea of an apple barrel freely available to the ship’s crew is oddly introduced in a passage about the liberality of the owners. Turns out, the author needs someplace for Jack to hide to overhear the pirates’ plans. It is part of the god-like-ness of writing a fiction. A problem? Voila! An apple barrel. Writing a novel is a cosmic chess game, an infinite playing of “house,” like being let loose in a toy store. As a child I lived in a world of worlds, of fantasy places and people. Posing and peopling a novel is just like that except that it has to communicate and have at least a modicum of coherence. Treasure Island is great for seeing how the author works. Its bones show, but not in a way that distracts. It’s just plainly written and straightforward.