Deep Creek [Hardcover]

Dana Hand (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 10, 2010

Idaho Territory, June 1887. A small-town judge takes his young daughter fishing, and she catches a man. Another body surfaces, then another. The final toll: over 30 Chinese gold miners brutally murdered. Their San Francisco employer hires Idaho lawman Joe Vincent to solve the case.

Soon he journeys up the wild Snake River with Lee Loi, an ambitious young company investigator, and Grace Sundown, a métis mountain guide with too many secrets. As they track the killers across the Pacific Northwest, through haunted canyons and city streets, each must put aside lies and old grievances to survive a quest that will change them forever.

Deep Creek is a historical thriller inspired by actual events and people: the 1887 massacre of Chinese miners in remote and beautiful Hells Canyon, the middle-aged judge who went after their slayers, and the sham race-murder trial that followed. This American tragedy was long suppressed and the victims nearly forgotten; Deep Creek teams history and imagination to illuminate how and why, in a seamless, fast-moving tale of courage and redemption, loss and love. A dazzling new novel for fans of Leif Enger, Lisa See, and Ivan Doig.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The 1887 massacre of more than 30 Chinese gold miners in a remote area of the Idaho territory provides the real-life foundation for this engrossing look at racial prejudice and the settling of the West, the first novel from Hand (the pen name for William Howarth and Anne Matthews). After police judge Joe Vincent and his 10-year-old daughter, Nell, find a body while fishing, more brutally mutilated bodies turn up along the Snake River. The Sam Yup Company, a Chinese labor exchange, hires Vincent to find the culprits. Lee Loi, an ambitious investigator, and Grace Sundown, a Métis mountain guide who shares a past with Vincent, join the hunt. The three track a murderous crew through remote canyons and towns. The plot soon evolves into an insightful look at how Chinese immigrants and American Indians became the targets of rage and violence. The subsequent capture and trial of the killers illustrate that how the West was won was neither simple nor fair to minorities. (Feb.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine

A fascinating account that's equally effective as mystery, Western history and character study (Las Vegas Review-Journal), this gripping, complex novel captivated the critics with its moving story, engaging characters, and stark, evocative writing. Building a novel around actual events can be tricky, but these first-time novelists carry it off with aplomb, seamlessly interweaving fact and fiction to fill in the historical gaps. Howarth and Matthews paint a vivid, visceral portrait of the Old West, bringing to life America's enduring struggles with diversity and racial tension. The Oregonian alone voiced complaints, including an objection to liberties taken with real-life characters. Nonetheless, most critics agreed that "fans of Northwest history, Westerns and mysteries will find much to like in this tale" (Seattle Times).

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition edition (February 10, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0547237480
• ISBN-13: 978-0547237480
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #579,255 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

See http://www.dana-hand.com for author interview, character profiles, resources, guides for readers, plus images and maps of the Deep Creek country. Thanks!

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant debut western February 14, 2010

By John V. Fleming

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

"Deep Creek", Dana Hand's debut novel, is richly satisfying in at least four ways. It meets my first requirement of all fiction: it tells an engaging story. Next, that story is firmly grounded in actual historical events, many of them of the sort that may not automatically come to mind at the mention of the word "Western". The animating event of "Deep Creek" was an actual mass murder of immigrant Chinese gold miners in 1887. The book's western setting (Idaho in the 1880s) is vivid, detailed, tactile, not an opera backdrop with painted cardboard forests and mountains. Dana Hand has a real sense of locality and landscape. As in many fine books topography becomes a kind of ancillary character. Finally, the actual human characters are varied, developed, and fully credible.

At one level "Deep Creek" could be described as a "detective novel". It is certainly enough of one that a reviewer must avoid spoiling its deft plot with a dull summary. Its quiet hero, Joe Vincent, is of a type you have probably met before: a good man whose duty it is to defend and enforce legality and civil values, placed in a situation where law and civilization seem at times mere words. In him there's a hint of the sheriff of "High Noon" and perhaps more than a hint of the lawman of "No Country for Old Men". I found myself closely identifying with him not in hero-worship but in simple and genuine fellow feeling. It is true that I was so deeply caught up in the book's central and horrific crime that I was hoping against hope that its resolution would be some kind of ideal and definitive justice that, unfortunately, the real world too seldom affords.

Any reader who likes a good western will like "Deep Creek". Though it is beautifully written, it is not oppressively "literary". Though its central satisfactions are those of a fascinating tale told in a fascinating manner, it touches upon themes of perennial relevance in American history: political, racial, legal, ethical, ecological. We want to read a book like this for the story, certainly; but there's way more to it than the shoot-`em-up. Dana Hand naturally invites comparison with some of the greats of the modern western, certainly with Larry McMurtry and Wallace Stegner. One of the several settings in Stegner's great "Angle of Repose" is actually the mining country of Idaho; but what really makes Dana Hand his soul mate is their shared meditation on the American west as the laboratory of our American civilization.

Don't read the first few pages of "Deep Creek" unless you have a couple of hours free. You won't want to put it down.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "He saw the trail of a human wolf." February 8, 2010

By Luan Gaines HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

The place is remote Hell's Canyon, 1887, along the Snake River in the Idaho Territory in the Pacific Northwest. The event is a horrendous massacre of over thirty Chinese miners, systematically mutilated, tortured, violated and murdered, a few of the bodies floating downriver to be caught by a young girl, Nell Vincent, fishing with her father, Joe, an ex-marshal. Now a police judge in the Territory, Joe takes it upon himself to investigate the shocking murders, traveling upriver with an Indian guide and a representative of the Chinese corporation responsible for the miners, Lee Loi. Vincent has a personal history with the guide, Grace Sundown, but both parties put their feelings aside in pursuit of the greater good, braving considerable danger to bring the murderers to trial.

Written under the pseudonym of Dana Hand, Will Howarth and Anne Matthews have constructed a harrowing account of an actual event, the victims of little account because of the color of their skin. The Idaho Territory is a brutal place, anti-immigrant sentiment spreading like a virus to accommodating ears. By the time the culprits are charged by the law, Vincent's journey will have unearthed some ugly truths and not a few political ambitions in a land rich with potential: "Sometimes it seemed the war had taken a breather, then sent its unfinished business west and north." Joe takes up the cause of the dead, relentless in his pursuit, the action moving between Joe's investigation and the activities in the miner's camp the year before the massacre, a grim picture of their daily lives, determination and skills and the hardships endured, men with dreams and ambitions, joys and sorrows.

The mountain canyons are filled with the screams of the dying, the massacre haunting Vincent until the trial, where frontier justice and an all-white jury favor white defendants. But in the course of his assignation with true evil, Vincent exposes the venal motives of greedy men and the black heart of a rogue with a silver tongue and the eyes of a wolf. Vincent faces his nemesis, surviving him only with the aid of Grace Sundown, Lee Loi and two young Chinese witnesses to the heinous murders. One man's courage does much to heal the damage of a few blighted souls, racial animus exposed in a violent, riveting tale at a time in history when the frontier is forged by saints and sinners. Luan Gaines/2010.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep Creek, history and the story unveiled chaper by chapter January 23, 2010

By Vicki Megginson

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

The story and characters reveal bit by bit, which each chapter bringing further understanding into the history of the pioneer northwest, Chinese work force, post Native American warrior time and the human characteristics of the individuals from ambition, greed, prejudice, honor, loyalty and evil. I found myself unable to turn off my reading light at the usual time and thinking about the book during the work day. Many books I have read informed and others have entertained me, but Deep Creek resides among a small number that have influenced and deepened my understanding.