When you take soldiers, plantation families, slaves, and Native Americans from their common comfort zones and thrust them into a situation where they must live and work together for their very survival, the social experiment of life itself might yield some interesting variables and outcomes such as: biases, hatred, ingenuity, self-discovery, forgiveness, and redemption. What would happen if multiple cultures clashed, purely by accident, during this upheaval in American history?
This convergence of destiny, propelled into motion by a series of unexpected events, is precisely what takes place in John Pate's debut novel, Tears of Gaduhav. It recounts multiple intersections of historical events and struggles, and weaves them together for a compelling result, and perhaps insight into what really happened.
More importantly, it forces the reader to come to terms with their own preconceived notions, biases, and assumptions of life during that era, by observing the participants’ struggles through the dilemma facing them. It generates an immediate comparison of the life and culture during that period versus life and culture today. In fact, it may answer more than the reader anticipated through a soul searching of sorts, to accept equality and the value of life at all levels.
Tears of Gaduhav attempts to combine a potential disaster with the condition of the human spirit, and the results are left for the reader to ponder.
