Bone Rattler: A Mystery of Colonial America by Eliot Pattison

Bone Rattler: A Mystery of Colonial America by Eliot Pattison

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had a lot of trouble with this, and nearly gave up on it.

In short, there's a lot of racism, and I'm not entirely convinced it's all the racism of the characters.  The protagonist, Duncan McCallum, is a convict transported from Britain to the New York colony in 1759, and he has the prejudices one might expect of someone completely unfamiliar with the American natives. But, as his vision is expanded and he learns how little he originally knew, there's too much of the "noble savage" in the natives he later meets (and for that matter in the only black character) for me to be comfortable.

Also, Pattison seems to know a lot about Tibetan culture and as much as one might expect of an American about American history and culture, but I have a really hard time believing his English characters...