Bruce Machart tells an epic story of a Texas family at the turn of the twentieth century: a family of men led by a father, emotionally crippled following the death of his wife while in childbirth with their fourth boy, Karel. From an early age, Karel proves so talented on horseback that his father enlists him to ride in acreage-staked horseraces against his neighbors, culminating in the ultimate high-stakes race against a powerful Spanish patriarch and his alluring daughters. Hanging in the balance are his father’s fortune, his brothers’ futures, and his own fate. Fourteen years later, with the stake of the race still driven hard between him and his brothers, Karel is finally forced to dress the wounds of his past and salvage the tattered fabric of his family.
With rich descriptive language and a cadence as deliberate and determined as the people and horses of the story, The Wake of Forgiveness compels us to consider the inescapable connections between sons and their mothers, between landscape and family, and between remembrance and redemption.
Lionel was very young when his parents died, so he can barely remember the old days, before he and his sister Beatrice came to the Chalk Bluff Boarding School on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. His life is peaceful enough, as long as he obeys the priests and the army officers who control the reservation. So he can't understand why Beatrice seems to provoke their anger at every turn: why she refuses to cut her hair short and insists on honoring the old Blackfeet traditions that the priests have forbidden. When the appearance of a frozen corpse triggers an irreversible chain of events, Lionel and Beatrice find themselves on a stolen horse fleeing for their lives. Somewhere in the mountains, beyond the territory claimed by the white men, lies their grandfather's homestead--and the promise of freedom. If only they can survive long enough to find him... At once thought-provoking and action-packed, this incredibly original and beautifully-written novel takes readers on an unforgettable journey through the wilderness of Montana in the early 1900s.
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