East of Us

Published in the Sun-Gazette Jan. 9, 2013

     The new novel by Tulare County author Sylvia Ross, East of the Great Valley: The Story of Merab McCreary, is a marvelous portrait of how we came to be who we are here in one of the great valleys of the world.  It takes place in the 1860's, the time between the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill and the Golden Spike, between the establishment of a crude form of Anglo government and the almost total decimation of the native societies that had lived here with their own forms of law and order prior to the arrival of those from the east.

     Where it takes place is along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada in the Gold Country, beginning in Crane Valley (now Bass Lake) in eastern Fresno County northwestward to Angels Camp in Calaveras County and back again, with stopovers in Sonora and Bootjack and the vast territory between them.  It is the story of a Chukchansi girl orphaned at age 2 and her adoption into the McCreary family by the mother, Nancy, only to be sold off by the father, Frederick, at age 6 at Nancy's death.  It is the story of men and women and children coming of age telling the story of our state coming of age through a very dark puberty.

    But the story is told so beautifully that it invites our understanding of this history.  Sylvia Ross is a very fine writer, both compassionate and unblinking.  She lets the details tell the story, from her first description of 2-year-old Merab's tiny comprehension of what's happening as her mother dies, to her last as the girl realizes she's become a marriageable woman with a good husband in sight.   And though many places in between we ache for the girl, her growing understanding of the world is far more compelling than her pain.  We don't feel sorry for her:  we feel admiration.

     One very important, though subtle, asect of the story is the connection between California's development and the nation's Civil War.  The divide between North and South on the eastern half of this country was muted here, but played itself out in subterranean ways.  The McCreary family finds itself divided by the conflict, portraying the strong difference between the two sides regarding human equality that existed between Frederick and Nancy at the family level, and within the communities themselves regarding not only natives, but the immigrant Chinese and other pilgrims to this land.  In this book, the tolerant and intolerant are seen working side by side, with peace kept only partially by human skill and ingenuity, with flare-ups common and brutal.

     Near the end of the book, when Merab is re-united with her Chukchansi grandfather Ootie, the subject of survival is raised.  How to survive as a whole human in a society dominated by those who fear your difference?  Adaptation is his advice; stay connected to your roots is her appreciative reply.  Ms. Ross leaves us with the impression that it takes both.  You don't have to be Chukchansi to know the truth of that, but hearing it from this woman's pen is a gift.
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Trudy Wischemann is a native from other places who writes in Lindsay.  Sylvia's new book is available at the Three Rivers Historical Museum, the Porterville Historical Museum, the Book Garden in Exeter, and online from Amazon.com.