The Wished For Country [Paperback]

Wayne Karlin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2002

The Wished For Country is set during the founding period of the Maryland colony, during the mid-17th century. The novel focuses on the entwined stories of James Hallam, a carpenter and indentured servant; Ezekiel, an African slave brought to Maryland from Barbados; and Tawzin, a Piscataway Indian, kidnapped to England when a child, and now back in America. While Hallam goes on to become a soldier and a player in the politics of the Maryland colony, Ezekiel and Tawzin become the center of an outcast group of blacks, whites, and Indians, who find themselves striving to reinvent themselves and their world. The stories of these three men, the women who love them, and the community they form, bring to vivid life the experiences of those who came to America pulled by a dream of what could be shaped from an emptiness that embodied promise, of those who were unwillingly brought to be the instruments of that dream, and of those who saw the shape of their world forever changed by the coming of the Europeans.

"The Wished For Country illuminates an aspect of our history that we dare not forget. Wayne Karlin's new book is an enthralling and important novel."-Robert Olen Butler

"A powerful and wonderful recreation, deeply imagined and richly detailed. This is a book to be cherished and [one hopes] highly honored."-George Garrett

"Again Wayne Karlin has demonstrated himself to be a serious artist who is concerned not only about what story is told but how! He has woven together strands of history and humanness and art into a wonderful whole."-Lucille Clifton

Wayne Karlin is the author of five novels: Crossover, Lost Armies, The Extras, Us, and Prisoners, and a memoir, Rumors and Stones. He lives in Southern Maryland.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Karlin turns the stereotypes of colonial America upside down in this latest effort, a powerful, vividly imagined historical novel about a running battle between a violent carpenter and his former slave that takes place during a trade war in the Chesapeake Bay area in the 17th century. James Hallam opens the book working as an indentured carpenter for the powerful Lord Calvert, but when he finishes his task he earns both his freedom and the ownership of the slave who assisted him, Ezekiel. But Hallam forfeits his right to Ezekiel when he insults Calvert after the nobleman tries to persuade him to enlist in his militia and fight against Calvert's chief rival, William Claiborne. Ezekiel's happiness in his new-found freedom turns out to be brief when Hallam finds him with a Susquehannock woman that the former slave has rescued from tribal punishment, and when Hallam brutally rapes the woman the deadly feud between the pair is off and running. The trade war proves equally nasty as Calvert and Claiborne battle to control the lucrative beaver pelt trade, with casualties including several Maryland tribes, most notably the Piscataway, the Susquehannocks and the Anacostas. Karlin's primary subplot revolves around a search for his identity by another former slave named Tawzin, a Piscataway tribesman who has returned to America after being kidnapped and spending his formative years in Europe. Karlin remains unflinching in his portrayal of the savagery of both whites and natives, but he balances the violence with a heady blend of brilliant characterizations, his use of poetic, lurid animal imagery and a compelling narrative. Some murky plotting slows the proceedings occasionally, but Karlin goes beyond the genteel world depicted in most colonial novels to create a riveting stage for his unusual, terrifying passion play.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"... a part of our history that is too often ignored..." -- Washington Post

"...readers will be in awe, minds on fire, forever changed by how we view our nation's colonial history." -- Bloomsbury Review

"An elegant and thoughtful historical..." -- Kirkus Reviews

"The book delivers." -- Balitmore Sun

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 340 pages
• Publisher: Curbstone Books; 1 edition (September 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880684896
• ISBN-13: 978-1880684894
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,078,513 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Wayne Karlin has published seven novels: Marble Mountain, The Wished-For Country, Prisoners, Lost Armies, The Extras, Us, and Crossover, and three works of creative non-fiction: Rumors and Stones, War Movies, and Wandering Souls: Journeys with the Dead and the Living in Viet Nam. While he is perhaps best known for his books about the aftermath of the Vietnam War, he has also written a historical novel set in 17th Century Maryland, a spy novel centered in Eastern Europe and another novel set in the Middle East. His writing career began after service as a Marine in the Vietnam War when he became an editor of Curbstone Press and co-edited the first anthology of veterans' fiction from the war: Free Fire Zone: Short Stories by Vietnam Veterans. More recently, as American editor for Curbstone's Voices from Vietnam series, he has edited and adapted translations of writers from Vietnam, including (with Le Minh Khue and Truong Vu), The Other Side of Heaven: Postwar Fiction by Vietnamese and American Writers, which was listed as a Critics' Choice for 1995-1996, and (with Ho Anh Thai) Love After War: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam, an anthology chosen by The San Francisco Chronicle as one of the 100 best books of 2003. Karlin was one of the script writers and a consultant for the film Song of the Stork, a Vietnamese-Singaporean co-production which has won the Best Feature Film title at the Milano Film Festival, was the first Asian film chosen in the Official Selection of the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily, Italy and was in the Official Selection of the Reflection of Our Time category of the Montreal Film Festival and has been shown in other festivals in Belgium, Canada and Thailand. He was the consulting producer and writer for a six part National Public Radio radio series on the aftermath of the Vietnam war. Karlin has received five State of Maryland Individual Artist Awards in Fiction, two Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Paterson Prize in Fiction for 1999 (with Barbara Kingsolver), and the Vietnam Veterans of American Excellence in Arts Award in 2005. A Professor of Languages and Literature at the College of Southern Maryland, Karlin is married to Ohnmar Thein Karlin, and has one son, the travel writer Adam Karlin.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What it was like to live in the New World centuries past, November 10, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wished For Country (Paperback)

The Wished-For Country is an original and inherently interesting novel by Wayne Karlin which is set in Maryland during early Colonial times, and opens in the year 1634. The interwoven tales of a carpenter, an indentured servant, an African slave and a Piscataway Indian who was kidnapped to England as a child blend in this evocative and masterful recreation of what it was like to live in the New World centuries past. The Wished-For Country is a superbly written, thoroughly engaging, and highly recommended historical novel.

5.0 out of 5 stars Wayne Karlin Writes Like A Dream, April 22, 2004

By 

Dagmar S. Noll (Willimantic, CT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wished For Country (Paperback)

I wish I could put Wayne Karlin's "The Wished-for Country" into the hands of every individual who loves reading beautifully crafted, poetic fiction. That said, Karlin's novel about the early days of Colonial Maryland is not entirely fiction. He was inspired by an actual written account of an early white settler, Father Andrew White, S.J., and has placed an excerpt of this account and others among his own chapters, which he calls "Songs". These "Songs" have their own true life in Karlin's poetic crafting-- it is impossible to tell where documented history ends and the fictional story begins.

This is an excellent book for those interested in exploring different perspectives on the English colonization of Maryland, for "The Wished-for Country" is told by many different narrators, including a Piscataway, a Jew, an English settler, an African slave, and even a hawk and a lion. Also of interest is the the motley, multi-racial "Wesort" group at the center of the novel's plot.

For those who like seeing their characters come back in other novels, fans of "A Wished-for Country" will find decendents of the Hallam family in Karlin's novel "Prisoners".

"A Wished-for Country" is now my favorite novel. When I reached the last page I turned back to page one and began again.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New American Heroes, January 1, 2003

By 

H. Hofmann, [e-mail] (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wished For Country (Paperback)

Karlin's characters bring to life the messy moral and political landscape of the 'New World.' The murky waters of the Southern Maryland swamps are an all-too-appropriate analogy for the confusion of natives and settlers in negotiating an unstable environment. The dangerous and unpredictable setting underscores the violence humans turn on each other in any/every setting, regardless of religion or ethnicity. Jacob Lombroso's band of misfits, the Wesorts, represents a circle of individuals who wish to live outside the existing social boundaries. This tale of their journey to establish a place for themselves amidst the turmoil and violence around them creates an alternative to traditional narratives of "the first Americans" by introducing previously marginalized voices: a slave, an indentured servant, an English girl stolen from her settler parents and raised by Indians, and so on.

One of the unique accomplishments of this book is to reinforce the violence of the religious paradigm by which our country was established. Readers find religion-both in America and in Lombroso's recollections of Europe-just as terrorizing a force as greed. Some of the most powerful passages-such as the journey of the dying Tyac's soul to the afterlife-emphasize the horrifying rape of souls which accompanied the Christians' rape of the land. Tawzin, a Piscataway Indian captured in his youth by the Catholics and returned to his homeland by Lombroso, best describes Christian conversion methods: "You place me in the dark, you take everything away from me, and in the dark and terrible emptiness in which you leave me, you put in Christ."

To me the book's most shining 'moment' is the presence of Cabbalist Jacob Lombroso and his obstinate resistance to the territorializing force of Christianity. ("God save me from your love," he tells a meddling priest.) His unstinting pursuit of tolerance and freedom for himself and his new community constitutes more of a heroicism to this reader than the greedy zeal of America's traditionally recognized forefathers. [The book mentions historic record of many of the characters, Lombroso included, and I'm not sure exactly where Karlin departs from the record.)

America's praise for the religiously persecuted in Europe who 'found refuge' in the New World always overlooks the persecution that the 'persecuted' inflicted on others when they got here. That Karlin's novel reminds readers of the territorializing instinct of religion is one of its greatest strengths, suggesting a natural place for it within the emerging Post-Colonial 'tradition' in literature. At the same time, this is in many ways a utopian novel, since it focuses on the determination of these early Americans--in the face of unending opposition-- to live in harmony.