Riding the Trail of Tears

Sherman Alexie meets William Gibson. Louise Erdrich meets Franz Kafka. Leslie Marmon Silko meets Philip K. Dick. However you might want to put it, this is Native American fiction in a whole new world. A surrealistic revisiting of the Cherokee Removal, Riding the Trail of Tears takes us to north Georgia in the near future, into a virtual-reality tourist compound where customers ride the Trail of Tears, and into the world of Tallulah Wilson, a Cherokee woman who works there. When several tourists lose consciousness inside the ride, employees and customers at the compound come to believe, naturally, that a terrorist attack is imminent.

Little does Tallulah know that Cherokee Little People have taken up residence in the virtual world and fully intend to change the rides programming to suit their own point of view. Told by a narrator who knows all but can hardly be trusted, in a story reflecting generations of experience while recalling the events in a single day of Tallulahs life, this funny and poignant tale revises American history even as it offers a new way of thinking, both virtual and very real, about the past for both Native Americans and their Anglo counterparts.

“A dazzling futurist novel about a traumatic episode in U.S. history. Reader, when you accept Blake Hausman's invitation to ride the Trail of Tears in a theme park, be warned that you will become a participant in the Cherokee Removal, and not simply a witness.” Bharati Mukherjee, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and author of The Tree Bride

“There are few authors who take this kind of narrative risk in Native literatures. Histories of the Trail of Tears have been published, but Blake Hausman's telling of it is unique.” John Purdy, coeditor of Nothing but the Truth: An Anthology of Native American Literature

"Hausman's ironic tale of revising this shameful and horrific historic moment so that Anglos experience in virtual time what the Cherokee suffered 175 years ago is humorous and uniquely moving." Deborah Donovan, Booklist

"[Riding the Trail of Tears] offers much that can't be found elsewhere in today's fiction." David Keymer, Library Journal

"Riding the Trail of Tears is an engaging and entertaining read...It has a narrative and a main character that keeps a reader wanting to keep going all the way through." Matthew Long, Big Muddy

Blake M. Hausman lives in Portland, Oregon and teaches English at Portland Community College. His articles have appeared in Studies in American Indian Literatures and American Indian Quarterly.