Review 101: Deep Creek

Deep Creek by Dana Hand
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The main focus of this book is about a gruesome massacre of 30 Chinese miners along the Deep Creek. The main character is a man with many hats, who becomes the primary investigator to find out who could have done this. The book basically opens with him and his daughter fishing and what she catches is a dead body. This book is not for the weak.

There are many twists in the puzzle, interconnections and society, politics, and is this how the west was developed? Sadly, yes. The sentiment against the Chinese was beyond how even blacks were treated, although it may be a tie with how the Natives were treated. It is disgusting.

The saddest part about this book is how much it relied on true facts of what did happen. The torture, mutilation and killing of these Chinese men did in fact happen. The area has been now renamed as Chinese Massacre Creek.

You can read about the true accounts, as much as can be known, in an article that was published in 2006 by the Oregon Historical Quarterly, “‘A Most Daring Outrage’: Murders at Chinese Massacre Cove, 1887.” by Gregory Nokes. The book follows this well researched article quite closely, albeit with necessary changes for dramatization, that I suspect that Hand read this and said, this is my next book! Just a supposition on my part, although Hand did leave a note at the end of the book about the factual aspects.

Despite the dark aspects of the book, I did enjoy the style, the writing. It was masterfully written as fully immersed in the location and time frame.