Author Eliot Pattison first introduced readers to exiled Scottish clan chief Duncan McCallum in 2007, when Pattison launched a series of historical mysteries set in pre-revolutionary America. The collection opens with Bone Rattler, the novel from which the series takes its name.
The set currently includes seven novels, the third of which — Original Death — finds McCallum, a onetime Edinburgh medical student, in New York as the French and Indian War nears its end. It is the summer of 1760. In New France, Québec City has fallen to the British, but Montréal remains under French control as the British gear up to assault it.
Initially, McCallum is accompanying his elderly friend Conawago, a Nipmuc Indian, on what is supposed to be a joyous, long-overdue meeting between Conawago and two other surviving members of his decimated tribe.
But things go terribly wrong very quickly. Arriving at their destination, a tiny settlement of Christian Indians, McCallum and Conawago discover that many of the residents, including Conawago’s nephew Towantha, have been slaughtered and several children have been kidnapped. Towantha’s grandson, Ishmael, and Conawago quickly flee the scene, but in opposite directions.
Did French raiders from Canada kill the victims and make off with the children? Indians allied with the French? A messianic Native trying to launch an Indigenous revolution? British rangers falsely accuse McCallum of the murders, but he escapes with the help of a Mohawk Indian. Forced to choose between pursuing his northbound friend or racing south, toward Albany, to rescue Ishmael, McCallum sets out in search of the boy.
Many (make that very many) adventures — and misadventures — ensue in this evocative tale, which features period details and a fascinating protagonist who is fiercely proud of his Scottish roots yet emotionally tied to the Indigenous peoples of America, whose ways he has come to appreciate. McCallum has several priorities. He must try to find and unite Ishmael and Conawago, identify the murderers, rescue the missing children and, of course, save his own skin.
Pattison portrays his Indian characters and their culture with care. Some scenes, in particular, are especially memorable, such as a tense meeting of the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee (the Iroquois League) during a time of great turmoil and uncertainty.
Original Death emphasizes the multiplicity of Eastern Woodland tribes in British and French territories during the 18th century — Iroquois, Abenaki, Huron, Nipmuc, etc. — and the complexity of their relationships, both among themselves and with people of European origin.
The tribal people in Original Death have profound but confounding beliefs. The mysticism that permeates the novel, in which Natives often talk of “oracles,” the “old gods,” “spirits” and traveling to and from “the other side,” may strike some readers as fanciful. Yet others will appreciate what Pattison calls, in an author's note, “the deep capacity for spirituality” within the tribes that figure so prominently in the novel.
Pattison clearly recognizes the years preceding the American Revolution as a formative period in the development of the American character. The Bone Rattler series underscores the fact that many players — not just people of English ancestry — walked that stage. “The early colonies were in many ways founded and populated by a dazzling range of what we would call identities today,” Pattison said in an interview with the Journal of the American Revolution.
A word of warning: Original Death is not a novel for the faint of heart. It is a sometimes brutal tale set in an often vicious time and place. As Kirkus Reviews noted in its review, Original Death “is often somber and unblinking in its portrayal of a dark period in history.” But the violence is not gratuitous, and if readers come prepared they should not be taken aback.
An attorney, Pattison is a prolific author with varied interests. In addition to the Bone Rattler series, he has written the Inspector Shan mysteries, which are set in Tibet, as well as several nonfiction books on legal and business topics.
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