After a couple hours of banging on the first episode of the Mexican Revolution podcast series (ready to record this week) I was poking around the Interwebs and cut the trail of The Folklore Cycle by John Hood. I am utterly charmed.
Hood, a former journalist, has crafted what he describes as a young adult crossover series of yarns that live at the intersection of Frontier and Fey — the place I call Fennario, pinching Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter’s description:
…a peculiar place where Appalachia met immigrant Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish folk traditions, to my mind the mythic territory of Fennario, where Sweet William courted Pretty Peggy-O with such romantically disastrous consequences.
Here’s Hood’s caper:
John Hood’s Folklore Cycle is a series of novels and stories that combine elements of history, folklore, and epic fantasy to tell the story of America in fresh and exciting way.
Book One, Mountain Folk, introduces readers to Goran, a Sylph who lives atop North Carolina’s Pilot Mountain. Goran is one of those rare fairy beings who can venture without magical protection into the Blur, the human world where the days pass twenty times faster than in fairy realms. During his missions for the Rangers Guild, Goran encounters George Washington, Daniel Boone, an improbably tall dwarf named Har, a beautiful water maiden named Dela, and a series of terrifying monsters from European, African, and Native American folklore. But when Goran receives orders to help crush the American Revolution, he must choose between duty to guild and family and a fierce loyalty to his human friends and the principles they hold dear.
I thought to meself, well, that’s a hoot — I’m for it. Ol’ Dan’l himself would have enjoyed this — after all, he was a fantasy reader. His companion on at least on Long Hunt was Gulliver’s Travels, which he and his comrades read aloud to each other in camp. Lo and behold, Hood’s May 25 blog entry addresses this very subject.
When I was sketching out my initial Folklore Cycle novel, Mountain Folk, one of my first decisions was to make the frontiersman Daniel Boone a key character. Indeed, the book begins with this line: “Daniel thought he spotted wings in the trees, but he couldn’t be sure.” While researching Boone’s life, I came across a surprising fact: his favorite book was Gulliver’s Travels! I decided to incorporate this into the story, including the conceit that there really had been a traveler named Lemuel Gulliver, that he’d accidentally stumbled across a magical land inhabited by diminutive folk, and that he’d later befriended a clergyman in Ireland named . . .
You guessed it: Jonathan Swift.
As Mountain Folk and its successors took shape, my world-building increasingly centered on the idea of real-life authors of speculative fiction gaining inspiration for their works from encounters with magical beings. Washington Irving, for example, is an active character in Forest Folk. Future volumes will feature the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Melville, and Bram Stoker.
And it all started with a chance discovery about Daniel Boone’s reading habits.
Hood is a good writer and knows his history — that’s easy to tell from his blog and the interesting video series he produced as background and marketing for his cycle (linked below). The “YA crossover” designation means that the book is accessible to younger readers, but substantial enough for adult readers. It is kept PG, but he insists that he’s not dumbing down, either in the writing or the content.
In my novel Mountain Folk, there are six main point-of-view characters. Four are humans. Two are fairies. When they make their first appearances in the book, most are in their late teens. Over the course of the story the fairies age into their twenties and the humans age far more (the time differential is a key feature of my fictional world). For example, the central human character, Daniel Boone, reaches his late 50s by the final chapter…
That’s one reason my books are best described as young-adult crossovers. Another is that I made a conscious choice not to “dumb down” my stories even though younger folks form part of my intended audience. Readers encounter plenty of magical creatures and action scenes, to be sure, but I also try to depict historical events and personalities with the detail and complexity they deserve. I also use a broad vocabulary and mix long sentences in with short ones.
His model is Edgar Rice Burroughs (he named his dog Woola, after the faithful companion of John Carter, Warlord of Mars).
I like everything about this, especially the potential for luring young folk into the rich forests and meadows of frontier history through the fantastical. I also like the historicity of it. After all, the frontier folk — hailing mostly from the Celtic fringe and Germany — were steeped in folklore and the fey. So were the native peoples whose lands became the frontier.
I’ve long decided that if I am ever to take on fiction, it will work the lands of Fennario (although I must confess that, given my proclivities, any such work on my part would probably not stay “PG.” Hah!). As you know, my personal aesthetics carry an edge of enchantment. I am blessed to live in a fantastical landscape — when Lady Marilyn and I venture over Santiam Pass in winter, past the looming peak of Mt. Washington, we inevitably do so to the melancholy musings of “Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold.”
And, I insist that the checkering on my new CZ carbine is properly called “Dragonscale.”
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I’m way too far down other trails to follow Hood’s right now. I am, however, tempted to pick up his books in order to lay them in the path of some young person who just might be ready to put their moccasins on a frontier path. As we Frontier Partisans know, there is a lifetime of wonders and strange terrors to be found out here…
Matthew says
You know I did not read much young adult fiction even as a young adult. I was reading Dostoevsky when a lot people my age were reading YA. Not that I look down on it for any reason. I do believe that if you write for a young audience you should not dumb it down. Aside from alienating adult readers, you can alienate your target audience.
It seems natural to write a fantasy series set in Appalachia where the folklore runs deep. Indian spirits and Celtic Fey would mix together rather well.
John Maddox Roberts says
The late Manly Wade Wellman also wrote stories of the fantastic set in the southern Appalachians. I knew him late in his life.
JimC says
Silver John. Love that stuff. I love me a guitar-slingin’ hero.
Matthew says
Speaking of Manly Wade Wellman (and young adult fiction,) he wrote a novel called The Last Mammoth in which a young frontiersman and a Cherokee warrior hunt the last woolly mammoth. It features a cameo by Boone in the first chapter.
JimC says
Oh, I HAVE to track that down.
Matthew says
It’s a fun read. You can find it on Amazon, but I don’t think you use Amazon.
It’s short but it’s the type of adventure novel that I’m not sure is written anymore. You know a book for young boys.
JimC says
Oh, I’ll buy from the East India Co. if I have to — if Paulina Springs Books can’t get something.
Wayne says
Thanks for running the photo of the Daniel Boone statue (with his Plott hounds) which resides on the campus of my old employer, Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. Everything about the statue is as historically correct as can be, including the (not a coonskin cap) hat. I see it weekly and love that it’s in a place where Boone is reputed to have had a hunting cabin.
JimC says
It’s one of my favorite statues.
lane batot says
Reminds me of the Abenaki author Joseph Bruchac, who took legends of his people, and made a series of 3 novels incorporating them with Abenaki history–“Dawn Lands”, “Long River”, and “The Waters Between”. “Dawn Land” features(among the excellent Abenaki characters) a race of huge Bigfoot-like creatures, “Long River”(Abenaki name for the Connecticut river) has a wounded mammoth on the rampage, and “The Waters Between”, which is the Abenaki name for Lake Champlain, the Nessie-like Lake Champlain monster is a major character. All very well written, and highly recommended!
lane batot says
….And then there’s Pilot Mountain(sigh). A very iconic dome-shaped mountain bordering the Piedmont and the Appalachians to it’s Northwest. All local boys(and probably some girls, too) have climbed it, even though it is forbidden bylaw to climb the dome itself(considered too dangerous), insuring all the local boys WOULD therefore, climb it! It is just the sort of place some supernatural being would LOVE for it’s lair, for sure! I visited Pilot Mountain(that would be “Mount Pilot” on the Andy Griffith Show, if you’ll remember…..) many times in the past. It was named “Pilot” because it is a real eye catching local landmark, that the Indians and Frontiersmen used as a guide to “pilot” their travels, over the centuries. When I was growing up, one could be up on Pilot Mountain and see nothing but trees in every direction, with only the occasional break in the forest attesting to a few farms here and there. It was easy then to imagine the Cheraw Indians(whose territory it was in) or raiding Cherokee or Iroquois or Tuscarora or Creeks somewhere skulking in the woodlands, or passing early Frontiersmen. I’m SURE Daniel Boone saw Pilot Mountain in his rambles over the years–he may well have climbed it himself! Alas, last time I visited, that unbroken forest and former wild view for miles was mostly gone, replaced by roads, housing developments, and other forms of “progress”. Pilot Mountain State Park is now a tiny island of former wilderness surrounded by “civilization”……..
JimC says
There’s a Pilot Butte in Bend. Same principle.
lane batot says
…..But yeah, I’d like to read these books, for sure! I am never put off by “juvenile” fiction–a good tale well told is appropriate for everyone! I still reread books I read and loved as a kid! This author being inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs is certainly encouraging–I had DEVOURED ALL the “Tarzan” books at a young age, as most people that read ERB did, although he wrote the Tarzan books for an adult audience! The people that only know the Tarzan character from the movies, have no idea what a savage murderer Tarzan was, unless they read the books!