Sign of a Promise by James C. Schaap (review)

76 Western American Literature nection. She does try to expound a little on Ross’s interest in the new novel in certain French authors as a basis for his own Sawbones Memorial, but again it is a rather lean discussion. And yet the chapters on Whir of Gold and Sawbones Memorial do extend the reader’s interest beyond Ross’s undoubted first claim as a novelist, As For Me And My House, so in spite of some nagging doubts about the repetitiousness, generalizations and oddly unclear comparisons, Lorraine McMullen does at least make some kind of case for Sinclair Ross beyond the acknowledgement of his classic western novel and the short stories. PETER STEVENS, University of Windsor Sign of a Promise. By James C. Schaap. (Sioux Center, Iowa: Dordt Col­ lege Press, 1979. 262 pages, $6.95.) “Two years ago,” writes James Schaap in the Author’s Preface to Sign of a Promise, “ I stumbled on an old unkempt cemetery, miles from any main road. . . . The stones told an incredible story of children and tragic death . . . and I knew . . . that a significant, unrecorded human drama had once occurred here, far from the cities. . . .” Moved by a desire to give life to these lost stories of Dutch immigrants — with their strength, wisdom, humor and sorrow — and to preserve some­ thing of his Dutch heritage as well, Schaap wrote this collection of fifteen stories, his first published work. While the stories are based on fact (ferreted out from diaries and regional and oral histories) Schaap has embellished them all, and they are not meant as history. Fiction, he felt, would serve him better here. “A Vision of the Kingdom” is a short, powerful story of a man whose kingdom in the new land is a “seaport” on Lake Michigan, a place where big ships can bring people — especially Hollanders — and supplies. Impa­ tient for the future, Lamert van der Jagt has dredged a harbor and laid out streets on parchment. Then he waits, and soon the first merchant ship arrives from Milwaukee. Excited, he waves from his sturdy new pier. A dream has become reality. But then the sense of foreboding with which the story began explodes in the last four sentences that end his dream more quickly than it began. While that story holds no triumph, others do. “Redskins!” is the tale of an ill-prepared Dutch force readied to battle a band of approaching Indians who, rumor has it, are burning and killing everything in their path. The wagons of farmers “poured into Main Street” which “swarmed like a prairie ant hill” as preparations were made. Ike Hartman, self-appointed leader in the endeavor, stands before the men — “short men, tall men, tubs of blubber, and bags of skin and bones” — and shouts, “ ‘We gotta learn to kill, men!’” He proceeds to teach them to Reviews 77 fight with hay forks and manure forks, and farmers, over the course of the next half hour, become soldiers. It is through good fortune alone that they are never called upon to perform. The stories are a vivid encounter with a proud and determined people. Face to face with the Dutch settlers and their struggles, one remembers other immigrants on similar soil: Norwegians in Giants in the Earth, Danes in Julie McDonald’s Petra, and Frederick Manfred’s Frisian-Saxon forebears and family in Green Earth. Schaap is telling the familiar story of Great Plains newcomers who, through sometimes little more than sheer will power, carved a kingdom, or at least a promise of one. TERRY ANDREWS LASANSKY St. Paul, Minnesota Appaloosa Rising: The Legend of the Cowboy Buddha. By Gino Sky. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1980. 284 pages, $10.95 hardcover, $5.95 paperback.) Don Coyote, one of the characters in Appaloosa Rising, says of one of the novel’s episodes that it is a “supernatural morality play.” The same can be said of the whole novel, provided you add that it moves between tall tale and homemade myth, bolstered by LSD-inspired visions that have been recounted after copious drafts of Dickel’s Sour Mash Whiskey. The plot of such a fiction is not summarized briefly or serenely, so buckle...