Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to Bookmarked, the blog for readers and authors alike.
Today, I have a very special interview to share with none other than Donald Greco, author of several books, including his Youngstown Quintet series and, most recently, The Ghost Hawk.
This week on the podcast, Draco and I will be discussing all of Don's impressive works, so definitely give that a listen on Friday.
The Ghost Hawk is a story about rivalry and revenge. More than four centuries ago, around eastern Ohio, there was a tribe in the Mahoning River Valley called the Salt Springs, which was a part of the Erierhonon, a larger nation centered around the Great Lakes. These people were hunters, planters, and warriors. Almost none of them had ever seen a white man or a horse.
Most of the able-bodied young men of the Salt Springs tribe were divided into hunters or warriors, with the hunters being far fewer in number. Among the hunters was a leader by the name of Dark Moon. Another young man by the name of Red Eagle was the leader of the warriors. The two men were the same age and both yearned for the heart of Calling Dove, known to be the most beautiful young woman of the entire Erierhonon.
Both men were being considered by the rest of the Salt Springs tribe to succeed Big Hand, the aging chief. The Ghost Hawk is a story of rivalry between Dark Moon and Red Eagle for political and personal gain. It is a story of love, violence, and dishonor. And the ghost hawk witnesses it all from high in the distance... these acts of bravery, love, and treachery among the two men who forever changed the Erie nation.
To check out Don's latest book, go here.
Now, without further ado, please enjoy the following interview with Donald Greco.
BOOKMARKED: How did you get the idea for your latest novel, "The Ghost Hawk"?
DON GRECO: One day long ago, when I was a teenager, I was riding in the family car with my father to see his sister, my aunt Antoinette. It was just the normal, usual family visit. The main road to her residence was called “Salt Springs Road.”
I remember asking my father, “Dad, why is this called Salt Springs Road?” My dad answered that about 200 years ago, there were indeed salt springs in the region now known as Youngstown. But when white settlers came to the Mahoning River Valley from what is now New England, for some reason, they filled in and buried all the salt springs.
When I heard that story, it stuck with me, and I’ve remembered it all through my adult life. Every time I go back to Youngstown, I somehow think of the salt springs. It occurred to me that Indians had lived for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years in that area and never thought of filling the salt springs in, because they were useful in their lives. And even though today there are many fine freshwater springs in the Youngstown/Mahoning County area, I still wish that there were those salt springs that made the region so unique.
Since all of my stories, which I now call the Youngstown Quintet, take place in what is the Mahoning Valley, I always knew that my last book in the series was going to be a story about the Indians that lived there almost 500 years ago. The salt springs were still on my mind. So, I decided to write a story about the Youngstown area when only Indian tribes were there. I also knew that the Indians of the North were very unlike the Plains Indians that appear so often in movie and television stories.
The Ohio climate was different; the forests were dense and the terrain was unlike the plains where buffalo roam. And I wanted to write a story that was very different from the way Indians had been portrayed in American modern 20th/21st century media. I also wanted them to be real people – some good ones and some bad ones. So, I put together a story based upon the precious historical knowledge that present day historians have. But my main focus was telling a story of real people, just normal humans. The story is about envy, jealousy, love, betrayal, and honor, where the characters act as human beings, much like how any ancient Egyptians, Greeks, or Chinese are portrayed.
What would you like potential readers to know about "The Ghost Hawk"?
I would like people to read my story and imagine American Indians that are portrayed differently than the usual way they are presented in Western media. My Ohio Indians of almost 500 years ago lived quite differently from the Indians that are usually portrayed in American media. For example, they did not know that white-skinned people ever existed, or that there was a large, non-threatening creature that, today, we called a horse. And yet, without horses or white people, they managed to form communities and trade, interact, and intermarry with other tribes, especially those that existed around the verdant valley that is today called the Youngstown area.
My story is about good and bad people, of people who love and people who hate, honorable and dishonorable people, braggarts and humble, hard-working, and honest people.
What is next for you? Are you working on anything new?
Not sure. Maybe a story of World War II, about survivors. I have a long way to go on it.
Talk me through what your typical writing process is like.
My writing pad and my pen rest on my desk all day. Sometimes I go there and write something when an idea occurs to me. At times, it’s for several minutes, but sometimes it’s for hours. I have to let the story develop in my mind. Then, I’m just a stenographer.
Is there anything you’d like to say to your readers or potential new readers?
I don’t think people, especially young people, read enough today. We have so many marvelous communication devices available to us (movies, television, cell phones, computers, email, and our own ease of communicating) that people seldom write things to communicate anymore. But that skill of writing has made human beings so very different from other animals. Humans have been writing to each other for thousands of years. Yet suddenly, that wonderful skill that was an integral part of our humanity seems to be diminished, or perhaps replaced, by visual and aural aids.
In fact, now some great scholars from Europe, and more recently America, have begun to analyze the uniquely human skill of communicating through writing. There seems to be a unique connection between the human brain and the arm and the hand that conveys an idea from a person’s brain to paper. And to their credit, they are trying to let us know that there is a kind of magic in reading and writing.
When a human reads something, especially a novel, all that exists is the book and the imagination of the reader. So, if you read Ben-Hur, you are back in Rome, in a Colosseum, in the chariot race, in the pathway of Christ carrying his cross, in the leper cave where Juda’s mother and sister are kept.
When you read War and Peace, you experience the opulent lives of the nobility, the fierceness of the merciless Russian winter, and the change of heart of the main characters. Again, it’s magic, because you can read some pages tonight, then come back, perhaps a few days later, and be transported right back into Czarist Russia again. Magic!
I heartily hope that our schools begin to stress again the uniquely human and personal wonder of individuals reading for pleasure.
***
Thank you, Don, for a great interview! Again, you can listen to Draco and I go through Don's impressive collection of works on our podcast this Friday. And be sure to give Don's new novel, The Ghost Hawk, a read. You won't regret it!
Allison Chudina
Editorial Assistant
Jan-Carol Publishing, Inc.
Bookmarked
Comments