The Book of the Great Border

Set in the American deep south of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, THE BOOK OF THE GREAT BORDER portrays extraordinary characters living in extraordinary times. Emory Oveson has an obsessively complex vision that takes him from his London home to North America, where he wanders southward in search of answers until he arrives in the Georgia Territories. There he finds an Indian woman from a strange, magical tribe so closely allied with nature that it rejects all languages and cultures, including those of the the Muscogulgans or "Creeks," the dominant tribe of the region. Once the couple unite, they settle into an odd but fulfilling frontier life until seething conflict between the Creeks and the ever-encroaching Americans boils over into America's first and most influential race war. In the midst of documented events that ultimately led to the near-extinction of American Indians, the political rise of Andrew Jackson, and the deep south's justification for African slavery, the couple are dragged into the conflict and forced to choose sides. Though the horrors they witness are emotionally devastating, they wrest meaning from suffering through Emory's theory of "The Great Border," the place where conditions in nature heighten the metaphysical laws of attraction and conflict that destroy and transform their world.