Inagehi by Jack Cady (review)

Reviews 213 DropHim TillHeDies: The Twisted Tragedy ofImmigrantHomesteaderThomasEgan. ByC.John Egan,Jr. (Sioux Falls: Ex Machina Publishing Company, 1994. 167 pages, $19.95/$12.95.) Early on July 13, 1882, Thomas Egan, a forty-seven-year-old Irish immi­ grant,washanged in SiouxFalls, DakotaTerritory, forthe murder ofhiswife. In fact, hewashanged three times. Hewasthe second person executed inwhatwas to become South Dakota, the firstbeingJack McCall,who died fiveyears earlier (March 1,1877) in Yankton for the murder ofWild Bill Hickok. Egan’s odyssey from Irish poverty in County Tipperary to Wisconsin, Da­ kota, and the gallows is told by C.John Egan,Jr., his great-grandson, a retired and prize-winning sports editor for the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader. Tom Egan’s immigrant experience wasn’t at first unusual, but his turned toward its horrify­ ing end when he married an Irish-American widow, Mary Hayden Lyons, who broughtwith her into the marriage her daughter Catherine. The family moved to a homestead in Grand MeadowTownship near Sioux Falls. On September 12,1880, MaryEganwasfound murdered in the root cellar of their home by her husband, who was arrested, tried, convicted, and sen­ tenced to hang. Despite some irregularities in the trial, legal appeals failed. The execution was bungled. On the first attempt, the rope broke. On the second, the trap malfunctioned, leavinghim dangling. On the third, Tom Egan died. But the mostbizarre twist ofthe story came forty-five years later, onJune 3, 1927, in Seattle,when CatherineVanHorn, Tom’ssixty-five-year-oldstepdaugh­ ter, confessed on her deathbed to a doctor and some family members, “Back in South Dakota, in the early 80’s, I killed my mother. . . . No one ever suspected me. Mystepfather, Thomas Egan, washung for the crime. He died avowing his innocence.”Tom Egan was to lie in an unmarked grave in St. Michael’sCem­ etery until 1957. Finally, on August 21, 1993, Governor Walter D. Miller of South Dakota issued a proclamation which implicitly pardoned him. John Egan tells agrim storywell, and he does an excellentjob ofsetting his ancestor’slynching in the context offrontierjustice and the continuing Ameri­ can debate about capital punishment. ROBERT C. STEENSMA University ofUtah Inagehi. Byjack Cady. (Seattle: Broken Moon Press, 1994. 272 pages, $13.95.) In the opening section of Inagehi,Jack Cady warns the reader that his protagonist is “ridden by more mysteries than a detective might see in a lifetime.”However, the contrived mysteries that make up this book evaporate 214 WesternAmerican Literature like mountain mistbecause Cady’srealinterestisinfusing an eclecticAmerican spiritualism out ofChristian beliefs and the old gods ofaboriginal America. Cady’s protagonist, Harriette Johnson, is an acculturated Cherokee who returns to her home community to discover the truth of her past. Not particu­ larly traditional herself, she moves into her parents’house while investigating her father’smurder. With a picture of “the teachingJesus”on the wall in front of her and a mountain inhabited bya mythical tribe called the Nunnehi not far off, she is appropriately situated to begin the work ofreligious synthesis. In the course of the story, Harriette frequently muses about the irony of whitesknowingmore about the Cherokee than the Cherokee.Amongherwhite mentors is an aging historian named Warwick, whose mystic pronouncements smack of pedantry and smug superiority. Thus it is utterly unconvincing when Harriette muses: “Why did men have to get so old before they amounted to anything. . . . It must have been nearly perfect to have been married to Warwick.” Asifthis lackofcultural agencywere notbad enough, the narrator informs us that the protagonist cannot tell her own storybecause “Harriette explains by living, and I explain with words.”This coyness isjust plain irritating. Cady’sdescriptive prose is equally irritating. His ornate descriptions range from excessive to sillyand sometimes border on the stereotypical. For example, he paints this picture ofa Cherokee mixed blood: “He was tall, whiter than she butsortofdarkly. . .. Hiseyeslooked like polished, happychocolate. Hismouth smiled and not thin-lipped.”At other times, he simplydescribes Indian charac­ ters as “racial.” It’s hard to decide which descriptive technique is the most offensive. In short, the book isunconvincing. Even the religiouscontent isineffectual because Cadyrelies too much on awestruck adjectives to make his points about the place of “ineffable”in our lives. He...