Sleeping Giant

Judy Smith

Paperback

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Part entrancing fable, yet based on historical fact, Sleeping Giant is by turns alarming and endearing. It is the story of the last remaining Montowese Indians around the mountainous formation called Sleeping Giant in Southern Connecticut.

Book Details

Publisher: Stephen F. Austin University Press
Publish Date: Feb 9th, 2015
Pages: 162
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 9.00in - 6.00in - 0.37in - 0.54lb
EAN: 9781622880973
Categories: • Literary• Indigenous - General (see also Indigenous Peoples of Turtle

About the Author

JUDY R. SMITH is a Professor Emerita of American and Native American Literature at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Her first novel, Yellowbird, won the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Award. Her fiction interrogates the complicated relationships among and between Algonquin Indians and English Colonists.

Praise for this book

There is blight on the side of the Giant, close to his belly. This Giant lay down centuries ago. Two miles long, he lies sleeping. No one knows how the Sleeping Giant came to be. Some say that a great, ancient Indian chief ate too many oysters and fell into a stuperous sleep. Others say the Sleeping Giant is Hobbomock, an evil spirit who stamped his foot into the Connecticut River, forever disrupting its course. To save the world from further mischief, Kietan, a good spirit, threw a spell over Hobbomock, a spell strong enough to last beyond time. Hobbomock sleeps, reminding us a price must always be paid. Don't believe either legend. They are not strong enough to capture Giant's truth.

Red-Tail's grandfather warned him over and over that he carries a name on his back. He sees him looking at the white women. "Find a good Indian girl," grandfather urges, his voice unconvincing, weak. Red-Tail doesn't believe what he says. Why should he listen to an old man who doesn't even listen to himself? An old man who pretends to be so powerful, not afraid even to doubt the legends of the great grandfathers. But Red-Tail has seen him trembling, near tears, as he looks up at the giant. Crazy old man, he says to himself. What does he know anyway? He never leaves the base of the mountain. He never goes into town. He doesn't know.