2012 Kansas Notable Books, Part I - Encore

today's k pierre presents was originally broadcast on nov twenty fifth two thousand twelve ok mcentire and today i'm kate pierre presents this year's kansas notable books part one each year the state library of kansas picks out the best new books by kansas others or about kansas as in previous years this year's list covers a wide range of topics from the assassination of president garfield to doc holliday to the world of mixed martial arts there's also poetry yet an adult fiction and much more we'll be giving away copies of most of this year's cannes is notable books i'll tell you had entered a when cabbies of these cuts later this hour we'll start today's program with two kansas filmmakers who explored the world in the first half of the nineteen hundreds of sun and martin johnson kelly ann wright is the author of ozone and martin for the love of adventure like many of the others will hear from today i met up with kelly and right at the kansas book

festival in topeka for people who aren't familiar with those said martin's story but about a semi dance in your tooth young can sense that at the minnow says only sixteen ran away and got married and she followed martin on his adventures that i don't mean it in a way that she filed and she was an adventure to but because she married him and she was able to travel the world in a way that women at that time really were illegal to and they made a documentary film it's n o c word several books and they both look magazine articles and books and a certain children's books as well but tell about your travels in borneo and in africa knows that their interactions with native people and with weapons how did you first become aware of their story or how did you become interested in the johnsons i was in graduate school studying american history and was looking for a topic that would take me into selling narratives of adventure and a of wilderness is that were not

americans was looking at travelers went to africa and two entities and south america and my advisor at the time told me about the secret strike but she had seen in the window of an antique store in new york city and she actually had purchased long that i went on my own and that was of course poses i married adventure and when i began reading it i was truly fascinated by were closer had to say about these wild places that was very different from what the men are saying the other people's research and end also very charming were the things that endeared her to me was her love of oddities bringing given dates back to new york city and keeping them it's a patent bringing escape that was from and borneo to africa as well on safari and tying intellectual a refrigerator to her houseboat in borneo to strange fascinating things that really meant at the time weren't doing to joe trying to make the process of traveling more domestic she really saw herself

as making a homemade with martin indyk circumstances under which a lot of us would just drop or hands of the way she loves adventure and she loves the outdoors and she always had this yearning in her writings and even so her personal letters that she wrote home to her mother her home for a satellite for a white picket fence he puts it have one point that i don't i don't i don't know obviously i don't think she would have been happy that her life had been so in in africa she is really a ball at like paradise with it that for four years she's able to actually make a homeric that it's a strange sort of a mixture of american culture and african wilderness or shoes grow watermelons and levis that the elephants are coming into her current tv at the same time with rabbits in the summer of his

adventures start out being very much about exploring exotic people and at some point that really changes to exploring exotic animals talk about that seemed like a change in focus for them that's a really interesting question and so i'm still thinking about actually the very pragmatic reason is they actually where were away on an expedition and their producer sent a telegram and said that's enough of native people americans aren't interested in that anymore as a topic for phone they really want to see wildlife end in the history of america and of american culture there really isn't falling out of favor of displays of native peoples from around the world at that time in the nineteen twenties and it seems to have to do with an increasing awareness that maybe some of those images people are putting out their own museums and on film world at recess so that sort of falls out of the popular around for a while

it's probably hard for us to understand in this day and age of ready access to film exotic animals and i you know i grew up with marlin perkins said he handled but firm in that time this was really a world that people were americans weren't really unfamiliar with us mr really brought an entirely unexplored world to most americans absolutely did they see themselves a sort of animal missionaries in a way my minister definitely saw themselves as bridging the gap between science and entertainment martin very much so was very interested in being one of the serious naturalist collector scientist people and was upset how many had a falling out with the american museum of natural history and

curly gray who was his mentor there and he really thought that his films were bringing images of wildlife to people in a way that would help promote awareness of what the rest of the world was like and about the value of those films for science really is really interesting because their films from the nineteen tens and twenties and early thirties but so are migrating animals on the serengeti and scientists in a month that kids are different populations back then to now so i think martin thought he knew he was heading out to science tell you know your research for this but what's the most surprising thing you learned about a son martin these are what let me rephrase that what do you like the most about them one of the things that endeared me to martineau says that they themselves are constantly learning readjusting their preconceptions and seeing things anew they weren't afraid to admit mistakes

or to reveal their enthusiasm it's not give you an example from my book that expresses what i mean by a breakfast that first morning three elegant still plays only within sight throwing dust over their backs and just enjoying the sun and they are the johnsons delighted in their casual errors like this place as their home martin said amazed and they've let us move right and they walked that the lake where mind set up his camera he was getting wonderful footage of elephants mingling peacefully when he told us had to walk into the picture as you can hear she began to think of the wild elephants a circus animals and imagines it safe to in her words going up and feed them unpack their wrinkle trunks to walk towards them seem the most natural thing in the world to do it i decided to pick one's name is jumbo it hadn't occurred to me to be afraid so and he got too close to the animals she startled time she

froze for a second stunned at the wheeling elephant to now seemed more wild than a circus act it began to run away but i was so instead of doing the same herself started to chase after them it was a ludicrous i remembered martin that tiny khaki clad figure in pursuit of those great hall it's also heard this historic laughter and turned back what would you have done if you caught them he teased her gathering up what remained of her dignity and feeling quite silly she replied i had to show them they could have left me that's kelly and right reading from her book both fleck and martin for the love of adventure thank you kelly my pleasure thank you and now for a very different adventure hour next camp was notable book takes us into the world of mixed martial arts matthew polly's new book is tapped out welcome matthew as you open your book with a definition is several definitions actually of the

tidal tapped out white that they just tapped out mean in how it apply to you as you set out on this adventure wall topped out it means a couple things like broke you know it also means the kegs tapped out that's were originally comes from and then mixed martial arts tapping out means to submit and so in many ways the story is about myself i spent two years studying mixed martial arts she an ultimate fighter and most the time i was being tapped out so the idea's what it's like to try to be this great warrior when you're just too old and overweight and give the every man experience the kind of george plimpton us experience of what it was like and mostly spend a lot of time tapping like please let go of my think of the alternative the alternative something breaks or you pass up so tapping out is what you do before it's over ok let's go back in time fifteen years this is not your first experience with unbecoming at it

ok yeah exactly no i first thing is was in college i went to the shaolin temple in china or spent two years learning kung fu and then that experience ended up turning up into a book american shell and which did very well as a national best seller so they ate and you asked me what you want to do next and i had led by this point though i had trained martial arts i was much older so i wanted to do something center back to say why his air bed maybe night now i know i was singing something like mysticism or religion i was interested not aspect and they wanted also mention this boredom its workforce become hugely popular especially amongst eighteen to thirty four year old males and so i said maybe i'd write about that and they said that's a great idea but we want you to do it so you got to carry it for thirty six hundred in the cage with these twenty year old monsters and they're like no that's why the story work it's about an everyday guy

trying to do it so that's what i ended up doing is like every day during my creaky body up and pj training or no or until finally i got to have my first unfortunately last month will shortz right field without giving away too much talk about that it's a tremendous experience and it felt like kind of an x sick you should date eventually they're just they kept getting closer closer and you kept thinking i can't postpone any more so i ended up walking into the cage and it was singularly the most intense moment of my life and everything else was blocked out all i could focus on was the person in front of me and when it was over it was the biggest con adrenaline rush i ever felt and one of my corner astronomy asked afterwards like oh forty second i was like this is a high like nothing ever experienced me said that's what's addictive about fighting but there's it is truly a kind of your lizard brain lights up at such a marshall hi

one of the surprising things about this book are by your experience with mixed martial arts what actually others frequently you get in the bike it's a great norman mailer quote fighting the roses to the deepest anxieties we contain there's not only the fear of getting hurt which is profound in more men and will admit to it that there is the opposite panic equally an admitted of hurting others for a really violent story i have to say this really surprised me and it was one of the surprising experiences i had is as i was driving to the event to have this fight take place and i'd spent two years preparing for all i had this terrible fear what happens if i'm fighting him and i'm winning in the rest will stop a fight and what i found interesting about the fighters is they don't mind getting hurt or hurting someone else but they don't want it injure anyone like knocking some around given a bloody black guy or bloody noses long as the guys find the next day or a couple days

later they don't worry but if that hurts you like that you can train anymore it's almost like stealing from someone has as they're lit livelihood if they take if they're hurt they can't if they're injured they can train and so i was fine afterwards were guys would go like you not injured areas like nome are like ok what's a blackout that far so there there was this real sense of home i think its inmates in our training that you think you wanna hurt somebody or you get all prepared and then there's a more we actually worried about the other person that let an innate goodness that comes out and you have to overcome that but to do it and really what happened was he hit me so hard i could barely blink and at that point it my concern for him what's left michael that's it lasted until it at harvard said about why are obama do about outside a factoid about her and the others to the front of your bike and there's a great photograph and you are

getting just blasted the united states but the really painful looking site that it's funny my editor was the one who came up with the idea of doing these protests are three book and once i finished that i was like what are you to do for recovery goes it's called punch face words they use they use these relief passed cameras to catch the moment when you're giving hitler face ruin faces wobbly is like i think that the great cover at that point when do not like me very much as though the only well do this as if you're the one putting it and so he agreed so actually for four hours my editor got to punch me in the face repeatedly for how we're four hours it took for hours he must it be fifty times it and they kept saying they didn't quite get the shot right and so i was dizzy and blurry i was punch drunk really by the end of that and finally there i was like look that's all i'm doing they're like ok ok look the shot looks like it works what they didn't it was actually have a shot

at the wrestler for fraud matthew cowley author of tapped out an odyssey in mixed martial arts polly was born and raised in topeka he now lives in connecticut if you're just joining us today on k pr presents we're talking with the authors of this year's kansas notable books up next topeka author and frequent k pr commentator tom kean for all his latest book the road is based on the song tennessee stud to set the mood let's listen to a little bit of tennessee stud performed here by doubt watson it's

b that's tennessee stud performed by the nitty gritty dirt band featuring dan watson tennessee's that was the inspiration for tom april's novel road not only is rowed a kansas notable book it was also named the outstanding novel of the year by the national cowboy and western heritage museum in oklahoma city tom welcome back nice to be here thanks for having me so you start with this great jimmy driftwood ballot about the tennessee stud where did you go from there it all started thirty eight years ago at the walnut valley bluegrass festival in in winfield kansas i went there like the third year that was in existence is it just celebrated its fortieth year last september and there i heard doc watson and merle saying tennessee stud for that first time it ever heard the song and

i fell in love with it and i was in a little bluegrass band called the rock island line played around in lawrence with my brother rick atkinson increasing linen and jeff derringer on the base in which we had these gigs and we learn the song together and then i sang it and then i could play that was in the band and i thought it would be a great lullaby when i had my daughter in nineteen eighty two he says sing it to her over and over again and at night was a long and rhythmic and only one murder toward to him and it seemed like an appropriate enough and then and then in nineteen ninety seven when my son was born many years later lullaby time again and i find myself sitting in the dark singing a song that i thought the humvee thousands of times i've sung the song but it's always intrigued me was critical lines have me some trouble with my sweetheart paul where the tennessee stud green eyes

turning blue as he was dreaming of his sweetheart to anchor some of them you can just talk often quick narrative or two to rhyme and you know when we are unique but i give me what is the story behind this song that we want to what is actually going on between real people and so that's when i decided at some point it really got it just engaged citizen of fictional up and not tried it tell jimmy different story as he told so well in tennessee stud the just what my version of that if i could write my version of it so that's what i tried to do and it wasn't interesting there was an intriguing excursion in my writing life because i had i had to do all the trouble that was a base that the statement that the song starts in tennessee drifted on down into arkansas law of no man's land cross river called the rio grande and so literally i got research grants from from washburn

university small research clinton and made trips to to tennessee to arkansas to the jimmy driftwood archives in conway so reaching for more material behind a song and i had this eureka moment where i found this paragraph which i reprinted in the preface of the book and that all this does is going to myanmar doesn't it anymore really what nfl the same paragraph on the back of an album cover so that anybody could see this the same thing i traveled to conley to see but when i was in conway as penny mind and have there jamie proved was so prolific both as a songwriter and a poet i read and read and read and read jimmy drayton copy down lines and tried tried to get his spirit and his language into the book as much as possible a passage from this that you can share with us when i read from the book i can chew to her

read passages that speak more true character then to plot because the plot is pretty well pretty well known but one of the important things that happened over and over again as he has to cross rivers and water and rivers is very important all the way through the book and then and there's a passage that first time swimming the mississippi river and if i can read a little from that that passage that begins a little bit of insight into at him and his character in his personality on he's he's made it to memphis and he's stayed there for a brief time with men in harlem and as he is being pursued by a bounty hunter because he's been falsely accused of all of the murder celeste the trouble with a sweetheart brother aaron paul and a barrier runs across yemen and challenges his horse to race and and johnson wins just barely but the bounty hunter swears chipped cup you know that you'll get

his revenge and so on so few jobs realizes he has to swim the mississippi has to swim at that night and hiram asked him to decide to swim a box over full of supplies and this county has to do with a subplot of what's going on a cross between settlements and settlements and projecting with with african americans in and if there's a nice hint all the way through the hiring is involved somehow in helping the slaves escape into its territory where they can't be as easily pursued to each carrying a box then swimming in a cross along with his portion in yemen there it goes like this if he was in the middle of the mississippi injury behind him crossing they were into something new on a bank of the river in front of him are behind he was unsure of dog howl or wasn't a wolf the box pulled itself out

of the swath of moonlight into darkness it became the shadow of a box rectangular the same size as a baby coughing they had laid james into just such a box a boy not even two years old when robert was five his brother had crawled walk talk fever and cough himself to death robert watched his mother swat old jameson in all she lay him in the box his father had fashioned the old man had nailed it shut just as hiram had nailed this box robert remembered his mother's extravagance of tears how she could not leave the hump of earth after the burial and his father's anger first nothing that robert's mother until he demanded she leaves the grave and get inside and cook life goes on god took what he wanted i don't like it no more than you do he spat on the

ground and went inside he stood to one small window of their cabin that looked out to where his wife lay on the ground next to the district erst he cursed god he cursed her he cursed robert money as for bread finely he took down his bible and read all night he read all night robert's mother lay outside as though she wanted to enter the earth with her child and robert's father burned once buttering panel after another and robert he went to his small room in the rafters of the cabin and imagined he was a bird fly away and he was god's sparrow the one he'd looked after then robert slept healing and then all the next day and then the next evening his mother came inside called him down and made at supper she said i don't believe god takes what he wants i believe he receives what we're able to give him

she never spoke of james again when she died thirteen years later they opened another hole in the ground next to james roberts father said god takes what he wants robber did not correct him the stone drifted with the box in the darkness johnson was pulled from his reverie by boat so small he'd not seen it riding the current a deep voice out of there and bring it around the lantern sputtered light source alright another voice writer to buck roy mr dubois why johnson called actually my weight archangel at night as the second voice the bow came close her time when faster than me said johnson that a box as the second voice kaufman said johnson my baby boy died before i could get to the doctor sorry to hear it said the beach boys you're arkansas are trying to be said johnson i just wanna be home will be much longer said the deep voice the boat moved into the stronger current

followed the river southwest much by sen johnson the force the current lessened he mounted the star and his grandson horse's head sunni whisper saying that's tom ever all reading from his kansas notable book road by the way thats road are both the next canvas notable book is a collection of poetry by wyatt townley family lives in the kansas city area welcome wyatt tiny your book is entitled the afterlives of trees trees played a big part in many of your poems and i get the feeling they played a big part in your life that's true actually was my first role when i was a little one arm i got to play a tree and then all the ballerinas came out and spun around the stage and fell on me at the end of the dance but i have always felt very close to trees we live at the edge of the forest and trees are just wonderful teachers that

they're out they're teaching us all the time they're out every window if we're lucky there down every street we walked and if we would only remember to look at what teachers say our season after season so that in terms of the title the afterlives of trees so a mentally teaching us you know how to hold on how to let go but how after the guy and full and becomes the earth and feed the earthen feet in the insect world and another little creatures and then we sliced them up and they become our homes and they heat our homes and they become the furniture that we are sitting on the desks that were added and even i shall sit on which our books and i mean they're everywhere and and that the book itself is of course an afterlife of the tree so that they permeate really a premier and in their inner breasts i mean they are the things that change our exhalation

to the stuff that feeds us on our next inhalation so they really deeply a part of who we are thats a lovely thought because the infamous think they're a metaphor for life itself and i can say it better than a tree can say at that time i mean in the in the winter when it appears that the trees on are dead you know no what a great reminder know they are not good they are and deepening their roots and socially moon one of the things that i love about reading your poetry is that i am the language itself is fairly sparse they're not worth the poems that yeah they're very profound don't think you think it takes a long time to cut away their fat

and get to the bone that q nine one one little need around that to that time that might come within a michelangelo who is he found his sculptures spying the cutting away that's how he found their shape this by removing and that's often pay a key editing process of my own two to cut back although i'm no also learning to expand because something can be cut to spare lee i take that as a compliment do you have a couple points he'd like to request you to harm so in terms of treats teaching us really hard to let go and also really hard to poems can teach us also hard to see it in this way to palm x hammes bit because the trees are always there right the trees are there but we forget to look up and were looking in our shoes so

the poetry i think is a way of remembering to look up and to see as a means of seeing and so the poem i'm talking a metaphor but i'm a poet and i do this all the time so the poem becomes a almost a microscope on a telescope or even a periscope in terms of seeing around saying so into things or bring in a foreign ear and all of this is a way of saying um i had a couple of friends who had a snake and his name was bob and butthead just shed his skin and it was so exciting to them and i'm so sorry that i missed the shedding of the skin but in in the consideration obama having said a skin i realized of course that's what we're all doing in ways little and big i mean were shedding her skin a retailer's flakes them ma liked good stuff and then the ultimate shedding of the

skin that's what we're moving toward each of us and so this pond's cold strict tea it takes a lifetime to shed our skin take a lesson the snake slides out the maple shakes off its propellers and hand by hand we follow i cancel and gretel dropping what we can the cicadas sings only after leaving its shell on the tree just as the poem and winds down the page losing its earrings its shoes on the stance remembering bob bob and of course the trees huge who who let go two leaves vegas robe

every fall how how beautiful and processed and wyatt last year one of your poems from this book was chosen by gareth think healer for his writer's almanac can you read that poem for us and tell us the story behind it i'm a yoga teacher as well as a poet and i have had two new hips put in in the last few years and it was devastating but for a person who's so it's connected to mobility i'm a former dancer and apparently this is the result of my early dance career and external rotation and the problems that it creates in fact it's a very common hip replacement is a very common surgery for aging gets used to go through not that well we're all aging and whirled answers so but it's a it was a it really has been quite

a journey for me and so this poem came out of that it's called fire it's only the body it's only the hip joint it's just a bulging disc it's only whether until your heart it's a shoulder who needs it this happens all the time it's a very common it's unusual for people your age for people your age your in great shape remarkable shape it's nothing muted the main thing is it's temporary it's only a dollar and homesick why a town latest collection of poems is entitled the afterlives of trees wyatt thanks so much for coming in today though thinks k wyatt family and roderick timely are as far as i know the only husband and wife team

to win kansas notable book awards rather timely won that award in two thousand ton for his young adult novel the blue shoe he's won again this year for his children's novel the door in the forest welcome that frederick thanks for having me back the door the forest is a children's novel about two kids daniel and family who find themselves in a very interesting but dangerous situation roderick take it from there with two kids trying to get to a magical island that no one can get to and that no one has ever gone to so it's a place where no one has ever been born or died and were no one has ever told a lie and that's a problem for the main character daniel because he can't physically nour logically tell a lie without getting physically sick so he is a bad reputation in school because he tells the truth and

that's not always a good thing if you're in a school and the way they live in this ramshackle mansion weren't you presided over by this strange and lovely old grandmother who leads fortune's in the bubbles in her bubble bath and there's a lot of interest in magic in the book and that is pretty much in all the books that i had not a single magic wand so far is going to like but i think this is underlying innate sense of of magic that i've tried to impugn my writing with it because again i feel or have you read it a passage from your bike share let's start at the beginning some people claimed it was enchanted others swore it was cursed but really it hardly mattered what you thought because you couldn't

get your the place pushback against all your attempts setting up twisted thickets of hedge apple trees bristling with curved medieval looking for him after that came a girl clutching fistfuls fire thornton been backing and poison oak if at last you reached the creek you peer across and impervious curtain of leaves the never a crisp or fell with the change of seasons and finds that stitched the island closed like a coat for most science it wasn't even visible a patch of wildness and circle bar water and wedged in the tangle of undergrowth there was one place you could almost see the island as an island and that was where daniel was today at his favorite watching place on the footbridge over a contributing broke a half mile from his house i'm breezy afternoon as the foliage mcsween briefly aside

to let him see the green dark in almost tonight before his son's truck eyes he pushed away a flop of dirty blonde hair and looked down at the line of ripples where the clear water of the tributary but the sullen brown of the streams around the island three streams really cloudy embedded in quicksand that was another barrier the quicksand just ask would your mind a man whose dog jumped in after stick two summers ago and was sucked down before he could win daniel was fascinated by the stories by the impenetrable greenwald before him and more than anything by the poisonous white hated water snakes that won their chris lacey ss through the current the legend was that the snakes head human faces though he hadn't gotten close enough to be

sure the boy leaned against a railing and felt the wind finger his hair he had not given up hope of finding a way across there wasn't much adventure to be heard in the farming town of everywhere but here was an adventure that had been staring him in the face all his life and all he could to step back rather not only is the door in the forest and a really finely and ripping i read that you had a really fun website that goes with it is to say i like harry end and the sense of humor has been put into it off a little bit about what will find it rather tally that come well our broader taliban come visit fun place to be and i often just have fun being a pundit as animal sounds and all kinds of things and even a word cool it have to be careful not to step in because

you have to solve if you do so is a lot of fun to have to have that done and it constantly need to update it with with your books and your thoughts into reviews and i also have a facebook fan page which in which is growing as well and that's a lot of fun wonderful and wyatt your website as well sure i met wyatt townley dot com three keys in the middle of their excellent i'd been visiting with others wyatt townley and roderick townley two writers who have won kansas notable book awards from the state library of kansas wyatt tallies collection of poetry is the afterlives of trees roderick tallies children's novel is the door in the forest that alice live in the kansas city area they joined us in a teepee our studios again thanks for coming in today correction that are not the only husband and wife to receive

awards devins gilliam and poor east innocent civilian one notable book award in two thousand and four their children's book one kansas farmer ben wrote why laurie roy is a suspense novel set in rural north central kansas in nineteen sixty seven not only was it named a kansas notable book it was awarded the edgar allan poe award for best first novel by an american author named a new york times notable crime book lorrie ray was born and raised in manhattan kansas she joins us by telephone from her home in florida hi laurie road is the story of the scott family who leave their home in detroit to move to a farm in palco kansas are they do they come back

they can afford in the wake of that right away for the youth of the drive the family back in canada with hiv are thirty five pound hammer husband and father in the family and then after they arrived a young girl that year julian rocha fun and that the dead hand of course that kind of turmoil and the third going on for her to pay on that i've got family trouble in the future for white says malchow cargo of the world can live you can have a fictionalized portrait story fiction and the play the actual effect alive with all hand that i am the late fifties very tightly knit community many people live on the outskirts of farmers and that's got family once yet they're not active farmers when they move back so very very tight knit community and that got family with the exception of our god

they're all newcomers to the way of life in the city now go to the country sort of story everything about the life in newport feel you've got the mother and all her and her three children are there and they're battling not only having left behind friends and all that with familiar but i don't think that the new way of life and adjusting to this new way of life right after a little girl has disappeared in their community yeah from the fall out for the fear that this young girl had the theory young girl you have very little art and the way he appeared in her eighth in the younger got older and he got though billions of motherhood one or a point of view characters not only he tried to advance to the new way of drought from the new way of taking in making her way in the new home he's dealing with the fee her that simmering all around her because this young girl had disappeared and he wonders what that might mean for

her own children and their safety one of the themes through outbound road is what does it mean to be a man to be talked a little bit about on about that theme in when what you're trying to pursue there i mean you brought that up there that's not something i don't know that that room brought up before but you're exactly right and you have i guess and at various stages of their life you have our third guy who had the father of the head of the family had fans daniel chacon around thirteen fourteen years old trying to make a plan to manhattan and jonathan to iran mr lake horney empty the count the boyfriend of the old daughter and that he's very i have danielle who's not quite sure who he is or what it means the unmanned jonathan ames to be have found him play perfectly and he be

counting the arctic god help her and right hand man as you were in daniel reid than that and feel that jonathan anyway it within the thing from a two legged the relationship between art and goddesses and daniel through a mother's eye and i think our monocle know that sometimes we we want to nurture the thyme and the father you know the family that they take them have not the need to find a town why and ophelia finally may be realizing that her husband knows right and a need to step back in her life and how can you make of what he said that that was an interesting thing that came out of the book was following the three man a kind of different stages and they all seem to find a way where they need to go in the story and then you've got this great example of how to

not to be a man in an uncle yeah hooray you're referring to kill we hadn't married a woman he really wanted to marry in college life he dealing with what head of and what might've an and he turned i think he had not turned forty character of alcohol and violent think that we're not making money on hand and that he'd taken a very different path of the new hartford conn the head of the family they were very very alarmed and he had a very different path alive than twenty years later we leave and in contrast to one another you know i'm like i'd get out alive and i mean i wish i had a great kind of literary intelligent enough for it it was olive that road i can say that what point in the book it became then run

the ticket not only well and that they're at the road called that road with cotton trouble and wreak havoc in the bog but then many people pointed out the more figurative people taking that road than their lives have been something happened but the rail the first and found gunned down a different path i talk about rae earlier where you have a young man happier life planning to marry the one that he loved and he died of life take this job and then given a much different direction than it might have otherwise gone third child are a really tough for me i'd have went through time when my next bike and it would have combat role at all in that road near the time i first queried then they get wet then fell all the way through it with our body with the book i'd been visiting with lori roy other than road bend road is one of fifteen books this year to receive

that kansas notable book award and road also received the edgar allan poe award for the best new novel by an american author it was also named a new york times notable crime book laurie roy joined us by telephone from her home in florida thinks laurie we've got time for just one more cancers notable book this week the northern cheyenne exodus in history and memory is by jim like her and raymond powers it tells the story of the northern cheyenne forced to leave their lambs in montana and move to indian territory in modern day oklahoma and they're desperate attempt to get back to their homelands jim take us back to the heat in seventies and set the stage for us early september three gained seventy eight huge you've got an exodus of three hundred fifty three northern cheyenne men women children just simply fleeing the burlington agency with the intent of walking right you know most of them walk a

group that escaped had already moved and moved aside needed and they were in a separate area on the reservation so if you were suspicious and they were suspicious the army and no aged favors as suspicious enough to send the military out to watch them and they were they were watching them in their campfires were glowing and loan to hold my late more by early morning hour one of the indians who weren't part of the group came back with a story that they were known and that was the escape so how far did they get before therefore the military went after them turkey springs which is south of the kansas border was about thirty forty miles it's self the clark county i think and there was an encounter and the unions help them off in fact

they started a backfire an almost trapped a number of soldiers before they had escaped and had it all what happens is the army chases him through northern oklahoma south central kansas when they cross the kansas border they come into contact with them and helping ranching economy so you've got cowboys posses form from some of the local big ranching outfits that in some occasions are working with the army to true track these indians and force him to go home and other cases you get conflict between cowboys in the army but as they keep working their way northward that the army's efforts to catch them as an artist increasingly frustrated and you can see from the military point of view that they're they're terribly afraid of what the newspapers were the press accounts are going to say about them that they're being outwitted by these the savages and for the most part they were out with a guest there were there were there was one

incident where a garment that sir colorless in charge of god city and he tracks them to a little location for him today scott county it's now called and i look at a canyon and they are surrounded and this appears to be the end but they are going to capture them but long to hold a northern a northerner comes in and the temperature and wind blows the temperature drops and the army of course where we had people out watching but the next morning they were wrong they crossed the cans specific hour later union pacific railroad and then as they get into the settlements and northwest kansas we're in present day out wooden overland indicator of counties then they're encountered a very different kind of the community this isn't a wrenching masculine environment anymore now you're talking about agricultural settlements with families with children and then the violence takes a very

different kind of term so what happens that the attacks are conducted by groups of warrior battalion more years later when they ask the various people went wild hall and others who did it they all would say we didn't do it that it was these younger men and we couldn't control them younger more aggressive manner starting to assert more control and especially after the loss of their horses when the army did manage to capture most of the air force are battle canyon and after that most of the work that they had done and forging and rating over the last few weeks was was dissipated and so when they get in the north was can disturb are full of anger and outrage in probably looking for retaliation and that some of the first violent encounters come across through forging grades when young man are out on the move every day having a steel livestock horses trying to feed this large group of people moving north on foot and look across and then the path of some of their foraging they kill a

couple farmers are out topping hey the reagan a few homesteads revenue well there and within really an area of two or three square miles of their proximity fifteen minute or killed they're indicator counting on the south side and that there are some men who have or had been out looking at land than a returning and they were nine billion these warriors attack them and kill them or homesteads another instance were raided and men were killed the women were killed in there and then as they went over on to the beaver the same thing they hit the center of this czech community and they would kill the men and women were raped in those instances this sayed ar eventually captured and held at fort robinson nebraska what happens then the

issue goes up what do we do with them and the answer comes back from the highest echelons of government they're going back south at that point somehow the word gets out on the northern cheyenne are getting uneasy and they then began to keep them entirely caged up in this barracks word as word circulates among the giant held for robinson that you hear the army is going to make a smart back to indian territory in the dead of winter after we've just walked ortiz eight seven eight hundred miles at least try to get away from and tonight and movies in the dead of winter in their spine stiff and teach at any level and the result that they're going to die before they go back so what happens on january ninth meeting seventy nine pm or ten o'clock at night we have this pretty well documented the northern trans break out of the barracks that they were held and four robinson

army guards immediately begin firing on them the scientists themselves had firearms that they had hidden in the floorboards of the barracks that they'd probably been concealing from the army for several weeks and then ok awesome breaks loose it's it's almost a darwinian struggle for survival at that point on dozens of sciences men women children are shot down right there on the fort grounds in the first few minutes clusters of the others scatter to the area west of the fort and they're chased by the army though the fighting the shooting continues for several days the poll fifty eight some twenty second of january eighteenth a circle the last group of people in a little place called angel creek and they're essentially told give up and the response was firing from the northern cheyenne and so they kept firing on them until they were all did the whole war there were a few allies still

alive underneath those who are dead and at the end they were over sixteen northern cheyenne who died as a result of the attempted escape from fort robinson daniel accumulation of victims that mirrors what a shy and some sausage onto white sand northwest kansas and that's a fascinating part about the story is that there are victims in killers on all sides that it's hard to find a black and white karen a villain in the story it's it's far more complex i think than literature and historical memory of have depicted that's jeff liker and raymond powers they're the authors of the northern cheyenne and that has in history and memory one of seven kansas notable books we've covered today gentlemen thank you the northern cheyenne and so this osso and martin the afterlives of trees the door in the forest road ben brode tapped out seven down eight to go i'm kate mcintyre join me next week when we talk to the authors of the

rest of the kansas notable books meanwhile kansas public radio has copies of most of these books to give away if you'd like a chance to win a copy drop me an email with your first second and third choice my email address is kate mcintyre at kay you got edu that's k n c i n t y r e k u edu kbr presents as a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas