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| Faces in the Firelight by John L. Peyton author and illustrator 1992, 6x9", 267 pages b&w figures Softcover $19.95 (0-939923-19-X) |
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Faces in the Firelight chronicles one year in the life of northwoods Native Americans in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Enriched by the author’s first hand knowledge, learned while traveling among the Ojibway early in the 20th century, this fictionalized account is a valuable ethnological record incorporating legends and traditional lifeways of the northern Ojibway Indians. The plot centers around a young Ojibway man coming of age in a demanding physical, hence social, environment who, late in the year of this story, becomes badly scarred during a fight with a bear. Years late, Old Mosh, with the disfigured face and mauled leg, served as wilderness guide to the judge, the engineer, the banker, and the banker’s teen-aged son – John Peyton. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John L. Peyton was a native of Proctor, Minnesota, and had extensive contact with the Ojibway Indians early in the 20th century. He was well known in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin as an artist specializing in the northern forest: its creatures, people, places, and events. His earlier book, The Stone Canoe and Other Stories, was winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Fiction in 1991 and winner of the St. Louis County (MN) Historical Society Presidential Award for nonfiction in 1990.
Other Ojibway titles:
The Birch: Bright Tree of Life and Legend
The Stone Canoe and Other Stories