Books
The Night Birds
byThomas Maltman
- Selected by Indie Booksellers for the Fall '08/Winter '09 Reading Group List
- Picked as a Capital Read for Jefferson City, Missouri
- A BookSense and Midwest Connections Pick
The summer of 1876 is a time of fear and uncertainty for young Asa Senger and his German immigrant 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 which terrifies his parents into silence.
Then his Aunt Hazel, confined for years in an asylum, arrives, bearing with her stories about the Dakota Conflict of 1862. Her arrival will propel the story into the past, as far back as the Senger family's initial settlement in slave-holding Missouri, a place of superstition and folklore. Interweaving Grimm 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 intertwine in this lyrical narrative, as Asa discovers that violence cannot stay buried and every secret bears a cost. The past, Asa is about to find out, is as close as his own heartbeat.
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Coming Soon!
Little Wolves
a novel by Thomas Maltman
Thomas Maltman's second novel, Little Wolves, is a contemporary mystery that takes place in the same prairie country as The Night Birds. Stay tuned to this website for further announcements.