Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

I had certainly seen my fair share of animal bones, either happening upon them in the woods or excavating them from a fresh hunt. Something felt different about this one. I couldn't quite place it. Maybe it was because it was in Asheville, an environment I assumed was devoid of elemental remnants such as discarded bones, castoff feathers, and rock faces that scowl like relatives. There was brick and concrete and glass and steel in Asheville, for certain--anything else seemed misplaced. The bone, in such a tangible state, reminded me of home and what I loved about home--the simplicity of knowing what each day held and the certainty that people said what they meant and meant what they said. There were no flashy distractions, but there was strength, there was resolve, and they were foundational. I knew exactly where I stood and when to stand there. I had wanted so badly to fit into the shine of Asheville, but it never seemed to fit me.

The Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of Cherokee isn't really a reservation, which refers to a piece of land set aside by the government for Indians; it's a piece of land that was never truly ceded to the United States. The Cherokee who live there are living in a place where they can trace their lineage back dozens of generations, unlike those Cherokee who were forced to move to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears, where there was no history, no roots. Cowney Sequoyah is a young Cherokee man who has taken a position as a groundskeeper at the Grove Park Inn in nearby Asheville during World War II. He travels there along with Essie, a Cherokee girl taking a position of maid, and with whom Cowney falls desperately in love. But at the hotel he faces fierce prejudice from his coworkers, and from the soldiers who are bivouacked there, guarding what has become an ad hoc jail for prisoners of war.

Even As We Breathe is made up of several strands: there's Cowney's mooning for Essie, who has spurned him for an Italian prisoner of war. There's a human bone that Cowney finds while groundskeeping, and a missing Japanese girl whose disappearance--when put beside the mysterious bone--puts Cowney at suspicion. The investigation into the girl's disappearance is what gives the book much of its energy, even though the situation is clearly and clumsily contrived: as Cowney points out, only stupidity--and bigotry--could draw a connection between a polished human bone and a recently missing girl. There's also a plot, which perhaps makes up the novel's true soul, about Cowney coming to understand his dead father's exploits in World War I, and the nature of his death, which is kept a secret by Cowney's cruel and bitter uncle, Bud.

There's rich material here, and a few lost opportunities. There's a connection drawn between the racism faced by Cowney in Asheville and a racism, not much discussed, that his father faced during his own wartime experiences. And Clapsaddle draws a contrast between the ritzy "jazz city" of Asheville (somewhat undermined by the hotel's use as a prison camp) and the deeper, more natural relationship Cowney has with the land of his forefathers. But the prisoners of war are narrative nonentities; the missing Japanese girl and Essie's Italian lover are more or less plot devices that never get a perspective, or even dialogue, of their own, and the possibility of further entanglements--for instance, Bud's suggestion that Cowney try to sell bear gallbladder (?) to the captured Japanese--never bear fruit.

I say this is a missed opportunity because there's an interesting parallel to be drawn between the otherness of Cowney and Essie and the foreign prisoners, who are called "guests" with a kind of grim irony. Clapsaddle plays the mystery of Cowney's father's death as a kind of personal awakening for Cowney, at the expense of any richer understanding of the role of Native Americans in the U.S. military. What does it mean, for instance, that Cowney, born with a lame foot, is overlooked by the military machine that drafted, then destroyed, his father? I thought the narrative's focus on overt acts of racism, like the ticket teller who refuses to admit Cowney to the movies, prevented it from exploring this history in richer detail, or at least in a less muddled way.

But I got a lot of pleasure out of the setting of the novel, which is an area I love and know well--from which I just got back, actually. I appreciated how Even As We Breathe allowed me to see these places from new angles, new perspectives, and to learn a bit of history--like the Grove Park's use as a prison camp--that I had never known before. I've really appreciated the way that reading fiction by indigenous Americans has helped me to see the country in a new way, but this might be the first time that I've really been challenged to see a place that is important to me personally in this way.