![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The conceit is a good one: Geraldine Brooks, for one, has lately earned a mint and a Pulitzer Prize for her re-imagining of long-forgotten tales with historical underpinnings. These two authors have collectively published 18 nonfiction books on American history, literature and public issues, but this is their first novel. Now comes the fictional version, "Deep Creek," a novel by Dana Hand, the pen name for Will Howarth and Anne Matthews. Gregory Nokes, a former reporter and editor for The Oregonian, published his arduously researched nonfiction account of the incident, "Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon," in the autumn of 2009 it was named by this paper as one of the top 10 Pacific Northwest Books published last year and recently sold through its initial print run of 3,000. While six local men/boys were indicted for the crime shortly thereafter, all were acquitted and the act itself -the most heinous and monumental assault against the approximately 300,000 Chinese who immigrated to the United States during the latter half of the 19th century - was whitewashed and covered up by everyone from locals to eminent politicians for the next 100-plus years. In 1887, it is estimated that up to 34 Chinese nationals were murdered by a small band of horse rustlers on the Oregon-side confluence of the Snake River and Deep Creek, along an area of the waterfront now known as Chinese Massacre Cove. After nearly 125 years, everyone's suddenly digging through the dirt at Deep Creek. ![]()
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