Oblivion’s Altar
Coming Soon!
Oblivion’s Altar is currently out of print and will be republished in paperback and e-book soon
Winner of the 2003 Spur Award
for Best Original Paperback Novel
“A stunning work of imagination and scholarship.”
“In his passionate third novel, Spur Award–finalist Wilkinson spans six decades—from 1776 to 1839—in addressing the plight of Ridge, a great Cherokee chieftain. Wilkinson’s tale packs a strong emotional punch and cannot help but make readers wonder which side was the most civilized after all”
“Accept the premise that no work of historical fiction dealing with American Indians can match Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian,’ and you’re on your way to appreciating David Marion Wilkinson’s ‘Oblivion’s Altar’ for what it is: an entertaining, imaginative, and historically informed story about the ruthless displacement of the Cherokee Nation from its Georgia homeland. Through plausibly reconstructed dialogue, an impressive attention to material culture, and a cinematic eye, Wilkinson effectively, and at times brilliantly, illuminates the blood and guts of a Cherokee history seen from West to East.”
His own people would betray him. History would vindicate him.
Kah-nung-da-tla-geh, the great Cherokee chieftain known as the Ridge, was born with one foot in each of the two worlds. The first was that of his ancestors, the great Cherokee Nation, who once settled across the lower plains, their culture flourishing, their position secure.
The arrival of the white man changed life as the Ridge knew it forever, ushering in a new world of forced change, war, death, and misery.
It was the Ridge's visionary leadership that led the Cherokee into the future as one nation, with a culture at once unique and adaptable to the white man's.
But as the white tide flooded the plains, the Ridge's judgment would be questioned, tested, and ultimately flung aside in favor of war, and his contribution to the survival of the Cherokee Nation forgotten on the infamous Trail of Tears.