The Eden Hunter

Written in a steady, modulated voice that avoids the biblical excesses of Cormac McCarthy while staking a claim on similar turf, Skip Horack's The Eden Hunter tells the story of Kau, a Pygmy separated from his wife and family in Africa and enslaved in early nineteenth-century America. After years of servitude for a "good" master, Kau escapes and is soon caught by an Native American tribe that enslaves him once more while promising to escort him through their territory to a safe place. As they travel, Kau's memories of his homeland haunt him and keep open the psychic wound of his displacement. All Kau wants is his freedom, his own identity—as a Pygmy he is either mistaken for a child or a demon—and a place in the new world that feels something like his lost African home. Instead, he is repeatedly driven to partake in increasingly horrible acts of violence to either defend or save himself. Horack maintains a taut balance between Kau's past and present, but when Kau is enslaved once again and forced to help runaway slaves defend an abandoned British fort against encroaching American forces, the book loses some of its momentum. However, Horack gathers his energies for a satisfying conclusion that makes The Eden Hunter and its intimate look at early America's "lost tribes" an important take on Native American fiction and African-American slave tales.