Ghost Hawk by Susan Cooper (review)

After surviving three solitary months in a harsh Northeast winter to prove himself a man, Little Hawk, an eleven-year-old Wampanoag boy of the late seventeenth century, returns home to find his tribe decimated by plague. Little Hawk rebuilds a life along with several survivors from surrounding tribes, but the tensions between white settlers and Native Americans reach a fever pitch, and he is shot dead while trying to rescue an injured white man and his son. Up until this point, Little Hawk has narrated his own life, but now as a spirit, he tells the story of John Wakely, the white boy he helped and with whom Little Hawk’s ghost can now occasionally speak. John grows up to follow the tolerant preachings of Roger Williams, and eventually he also loses his life attempting to broker peace between the native tribes and the English settlers. The shift in focus after Little Hawk’s death is frustrating, as the character goes from a solid, developing protagonist to merely a placid observer, a mostly impotent engine by which John’s story is then told. The ghostly connection between the two, however, provides an opportunity for a cultural exchange that would likely not have otherwise happened, and Cooper explores the similarities and differences between the two communities while examining the dangerous concoction of greed, fear, and ignorance that drove the two factions to violence. Rich period detail makes for an immersive experience, but a more specific list of sources, particularly in regards to Little Hawk’s traditions, would have been appreciated. A closing timeline traces the multiple atrocities committed against Native Americans in the name of U.S. expansion, leaving readers with no easy answers, only a long, violent history, likely much different from the story told in their history textbooks.