A book that really looks back at the destruction of a Nation the Cherokee Nation, from the Revolutionary War to the Trail of Tears and how they got to that point. How Andrew Jackson of course has a lot to do with it and the selling of land and also his hatred of Indians. Just a good but sad book and one that needs to be read.

This book appeared just as I was learning a bit about the Cherokee( and other tribes in Indian Territory. It made an interesting read in addition to what I was learning. History really does overlook a lot of events in this country's development. Good read for anyone interested in the Cherokee and their place in U.S. history.

Take a ride through an America almost forgotten...

This book was refreshing and engaging. I enjoyed the history of the Cherokee people. This book was full of interesting information and kept the reader engaged throughout!

If you enjoy American history, then you are going to LOVE this book!

This is an important piece of history that we need to out into classrooms and into the hands of as many people as possible. The history of the Cherokee is American history.

Interesting and well researched nonfiction about the Cherokee people! I should have had a piece of paper to keep everyone straight though!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book.

This is a hard book to review because I learned a lot about the Cherokee Nation and their struggles in the 19th century, but my curiosity was not sated.

I always like a good western and I felt the author did a very good job in telling the history of the Cherokee people. I enjoyed the book and would like to read others from this author in the future

Wow it took me almost a month to finish this! While the beginning was slow going for me, it really picked up about halfway through. I learned so much, and I’m really glad I picked this up!

I think the title is a pretty good summarization of this book. Sedgwick tells the story of the Cherokee people from the birth of Major Ridge and John Ross in the late 1700s, to shortly after the Civil War. This story spans a large chunk of time, but I think Sedgwick did a good job of streamlining his storytelling, so not as to confuse the reader. I often feel that a lot of names get thrown around in historical non-fiction, especially when covering such a large amount of time, and I was surprisingly un-confused as I read this (is un-confused correct? I am tired). Sedgwick offered a coherent and easily followed narrative of quite a complex issue, and bridged both sides of the story, so that we got a full picture of the time period. He does offer his own commentary at the end of the book, which, while I understand the point of, I am not sure was completely necessary.

I came in to this book with minimal knowledge of the Cherokee people, and I learned so much, as mentioned above. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more, or deepening their knowledge, as Sedgwick is quite detailed in his writing. Some chapters went off on tangents, which, while interesting, distracted me from the main story. But even so, this is a great read, and I'm glad I stuck on and finished it!

A well-researched book with vividly rendered characters that fills in the voids left by many of our school history lessons about the American Indian experience.

Blood Moon was a thoroughly enthralling history of the Cherokee people. At turns terrifying, heartwrenching, anger-inducing, and hopeful this book read like historical fiction it was so engrossing. There were a lot of characters involved and at times it was hard to keep them all straight, but at the same time it was that panoply of people who made it so interesting. The author did a wonderful job of chronicling the lives of the two main characters in this book: The Ridge and John Ross. I would highly recommend this book and I'm sure it's one of those books that I will re-read because it's so fascinating!!

Thrilling and epic, this book brings together great research and dramatic story telling to narrate one of the most bloody conflicts in history.

This historical publication reads like fiction, but it's not. It is well documented, detailed, and sometimes overwhelming. I learned so much. It took me 3 months to read because I found I needed time to process what I was reading. I can see this book being used for a semester-long course in Native American history. Mr. Sedgwick does an amazing job of telling this story. I definitely recommend to all those interested in learning more about the Cherokee Nation.

A fascinating piece of history I knew nothing about. Blood Moon delves deep into the Cherokee nation, looking specifically at two rival chiefs. Highly recommend for history enthusiasts as the research that went in to this book is evident in the details.

I received a free Kindle copy of Blood Moon by John Sedgwick courtesy of Net Galley  and  Simon and Schuster the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and my fiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus pages.

I requested this book as the subject matter and the description sounded very interesting.  It is the first book by John Sedgwick that I have read.

This is a well researched and written book. It takes an interesting subject and keeps you attention with the engaging writing style of the author. The book is about the division within the Cherokee Nation with the two factions led by John Ross and the other by The Ridge. Ross was in favor of the Cherokees assimilating into America and becoming citizens with the history and culture eventually fading away. The Ridge was just the opposite. This struggle did more to divide the Nation than the infamous Trail of Tears.

I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the history of Native Americans and the Cherokee Nation in particular.

Blood Moon sucked me into history and the dilemmas faced by the Cherokee living among the European settlers. Both sides committed atrocities, and Sedgwick presents the facts in a balanced manner - showing both sides role in the decline in their relationships.

The lifestyle was incredibly interesting to learn about. One particular scene highlights the traditional Cherokee legal principal of justice in the case of murder, being blood vengeance, which is changed by The Ridge through persuasion. Another poignant insight was the Cherokee's spiritual beliefs surrounded by the rise of Christian missionaries. Traditionally they believed in a Spirit of all good and a being who was the author of all evil, who were at war with each other. They believed in a "heaven" which was visible for those who had undergone a change after death where there was plenty of fruit, game and beauty. The converse was also true that the wicked would be compelled to live with hunger, hostility and darkness.

The divide within the Cherokee Nation was shown to have begun as early as 1809 where statistics proved those of mixed-blood were more likely to prosper than the full-bloods members. The Ridge personified the uprising class of Cherokee, adopting the European custom of farming, purchasing African slaves for his plantation and changed crops to build greater wealth and land holdings. While wearing the trappings of the wealthy plantation owners, some of the Cherokee felt at odds with their heritage. Pressure within the Nation increased the divide as some wished to move west, while others persisted in retaining their homeland. 

It is a tragic chapter in history to watch both the Cherokee and American settlers fall into prejudice and war. As the fall out between The Ridge and John Ross occurred the Cherokee were further divided, they lost themselves and ultimately their people were expelled on the Trail of Tears.

I believe that scholars of history, and particularly early American history will love Blood Moon.

Sedgwick is quite the historian and storyteller. Thoroughly researched, Blood Moon was not only educational but immersive.

But I had a couple of reservations. First, Sedgwick starts off, stating that he employs the language from the time periods discussed, which is understandable. However, I found terms like "well-meaning Quaker missionaries" and "negro manservant" euphemistic, especially in discussion with forced assimilation and servitude [during the Civil War]. And second, I found the epilogue unnecessary. Sedgwick's analyzation of why the Cherokee's devastation was reiterative, given that his better narrative/storytelling told readers essentially the same message.

One of America's saddest legacies is the way European settlers and government combined to nearly wipe out an entire indigenous population. With Blood Moon, John Sedgwick shows us how Americans' greed and civil unrest tore the Cherokee Nation in half, while taking away their land, their homes, their culture, their beliefs, and often their pride.

The amount of research and detail Sedgwick put into this book is remarkable. I felt like I really knew and understood John Ross and The Ridge, two Cherokee leaders who found themselves on opposing sides when the US government demanded the entire Cherokee Nation relocate away from their homeland. The two leaders' inability - or, perhaps, stubborn refusal - to work together added to the Cherokees' confusion and inaction, inadvertently working in the Americans' favor.

John Sedgwick's narrative is entertaining and immersive, and this nonfiction book often reads as smoothly as historical fiction. He walks us through the entire collapse of the Cherokee Nation, from beginning to end, so we see it unraveling in all its glory and misery. This is a comprehensive read, certainly not quick or light, but I felt all the detail enhanced the experience, providing tremendous insight into this historic event.

This is an absolutely must read for persons interested in the culture and lifestyles of native Americans before, during and after the influx of Europeans to North America. John Sedgwick takes you there, and lets you see the personalities, the agendas of the major roll-players prior to and during the French and Indian wars of 1754-1763 when the tribe backed the French, the War of Independence 1776-1783 and the War of 1812 when the Cherokee Nation aligned themselves with Britain. We watch as their traditional lands go from covering most of seven states in 1700 to a little chunk that catches the very corners of Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and a little bigger piece of pie in Georgia in 1835. And then we have the Trail of Tears affecting the Cherokee through 1838 and the American Civil War. Sedgwick takes us through these conflicts and choices and the infighting between different factors of the tribe that over time decimated the Cherokee and set them adrift. These are all facts that have been out there but never before have I understood the underlying causes for the decisions made. Thank you John Sedgwick. This is a book I will add to my research shelf.

I received a free electronic copy of this historical novel based on historical fact from Jessica Breen at S&S, author John Sedgwick, and Simon and Schuster in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.

With a Blood Moon looming at the end of January 2018, I requested an ARC of this book via NetGalley. Who could resist that title, that image on the cover? Three months later, I've finally finished reading this tale, which is riveting, compelling, heartbreaking, and splendidly written. What took me so long?

Terrible things happen in this story, and they happened in real life, which makes me stop reading until I can summon the strength to come back for more. John Sedgwick has a gift for taking dry, dead history, breathing life into it, and spinning a tale of human passion and conflict, all the stuff that makes for great fiction. But it's not fiction, however much I wish it were.

Blood Moon: An American Epic of War and Splendor in the Cherokee Nation is splendid and epic, as the title promises. A history book that reads like fiction, "Blood Moon" brings to life the people who came before us. I'm amazed at the quantity, depth, and detailed research that went into this epic story of the Cherokee Nation. I had read and loved James Upton Terrell's "The Navajos"(1970) for the same kind of storytelling miracle. Years later I continue to remember Zarcillos Largos and how he died. Now, I will remember The Ridge, and Boudinot, and John Ridge, and the terrible ways they were killed.

My Kindle is packed full of highlighted names, dates, quotes, and information. It has taken me a long, long time to read this, and I still haven't read every page.

"Meteorologists now see that a blood moon is actually lit by an unusual sunset glow picked up form the earth's atmosphere as the sunlight brushes past," Sedgwick explains in "A Note on the Title." The Cherokee, however, saw the blood moon as "an ill portent. The moon was red with rage over what lay below."

Outsiders wrote and recorded most of what we know about the people who lived here before the Declaration of Independence launched a new nation. Sedgwick draws extensively from James Adair's "History of the American Indians," the first "and still the best" account of the Cherokee (never mind Adair's obsession with using his observations as evidence that American Indians were a lost tribe of Israel.)

Sedgwick writes,

Adair was there one night when the moon disappeared from the sky during a lunar eclipse, and he had never seen the Cherokee in such squawking pandemonium. 'They all ran wild, this way and that, firing off their guns, whooping and hallooing...and making the most horrid noises that human beings possibly could.' They were afraid the moon was gone forever, devoured, they decided, by a monstrous bullfrog in the night sky.

I especially love Sedgwick's brief history of Native Americans, or Indians, the term he uses throughout the book. On one side of the globe, people built the Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, the Parthenon; they created vast empires, and lost them; they invented writing, math, science, the printing press, musical instruments, politics, literature, fine china, table linens, jewelry, and all that. On the other side the globe, "maybe 20,000 years ago, when a few audacious souls ventured across the Bering Strait during an ice age," various tribes evolved in North America. Until 1492, the people on one side of the world had no idea the other side existed.

Much of this history is already familiar, one would hope, to most readers. The smallpox epidemic, however, is described here with more explicit horror than I'd seen anywhere else.

Sedgwick barely mentions a concept that Ian Frazier expounds on, in On the Rez. "In the land of the free," Frazier writes, "Indians were the original free,"known "a deep egalitarianism that made them not necessarily defer even to the leading men of their tribes." The American character, known for outspokenness and disregard for titles and nobility, was largely inspired by "The freedom that inhered in Powhatan, that Red Cloud carried with him from the plains to Washington as easily as air--freedom to be and to say, whenever, regardless of disapproval." But Sedgwick's history is about the Cherokee in particular, the tenuous notion of a Cherokee "Nation," and a sort of identity crisis that comes from being a people so free and unencumbered by the stuff of books and maps. Without governments, documents, and maps, how were the natives to establish"ownership" preserve their place in a land of the free?

I had heard of the British accepting the American terms for peace in Paris in 1783, but of a man named Dragging Canoe, I recall nothing from my college or high school history books. The Cherokee were allies of the British? Somehow I missed a lot of these intriguing details, most likely because they were never mentioned. Not in the small Midwest town of the 1970s where I was schooled.

The history, the details, the people, the sense of time and place, are all captured in vivid detail in "Blood Moon," and it would take me all day and all night just to summarize this one slice of American history.

War and Splendor
in the same sentence may seem antiquated or oxymoronic to modern readers, schooled as we are in ideals of discourse instead of weapons. But the opening pages cannot fail to stir us, with prose that some would dare call purple, "This is the last big surprise of the Civil war: it was fought not just by the whites of the North and South, and by the blacks who mostly came in after the Emancipation." It was also fought by some 30,000 Indians, from the Seneca to the Seminole.

"Shaped by a warrior culture, most were used to violence, and they took to battle. Their long black hair spilling out from under their caps, their shoddy uniforms ill-fitting, their faces painted in harsh war colors, they surged into battle with a terrifying cry, equipped not just with army-issue rifles but also with hunting knives, tomahawks, and, often, bows and arrows. Even when mounted on horses, they exhibited a deadly aim..."

Where are the pictures of that? Why do U.S. History classes overlook such an awesome episode while reciting dull summaries of idiotic battles where men shoot each other with cannons at close range or march toward each other in rows, mowing each other down with bullets? I hate war, the reasons for war, the methods, the casualties, the tombstones, and the documentaries my husband watches.

But I love the skill and ferocity of our Native Americans, though I wince and cringe at the blood they shed, the scalps they raised to the sky. My dad's black and white TV Westerns never came close to capturing it, so it can only be the storyteller's gift of inspiring me with these images. Starting with "Black Elk Speaks," as the great Oglala Sioux warrior told it to John G. Neihardt, I moved to "Geronimo," the "Custer Died for Our Sins," "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," on to the Navajos, and more, becoming increasingly outraged by America's lack of attention to Natives in our history books, political campaigns, movies and TV shows, not to mention a conspicuous absence of Natives in our every day lives, in most parts of the country.

In popular music, the 1960s gave us "Cherokee Nation" (proper title, "Indian Reservation") by Paul Revere and the Raiders. Lead singer MarkLindsey, who also produced the song, is part Cherokee. This youtube video begins with photos of Natives from other tribes and drew the usual variety of interesting comments from viewers. (You all know how I love reader/viewer feedback.)

I have said nothing about the stars of this book John Ross, his rival The Ridge, The Trail of Tears, the treachery, the battles, and the assassinations. It has taken me three months, on and off, to get through these bloody pages. Also, this ARC (Advance Reader Copy) comes with a DISCLAIMER from Simon & Schuster: Do not quote for publication until verified with the finished book.

And so I will offer just my impression of this story as a magnificent addition to my library, and to any library anywhere, and I would make it mandatory reading if I were a history teacher.

What student wouldn't love history class, if more history books read like fiction, full of passion and conflict, with unforgettable and richly drawn characters?

Thank you to John Sedgwick, Simon & Schuster, and Netgalley, for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Most people have heard about how assimilated the Cherokees were (hence why everyone has a 'Cherokee Princess' (aka eyeroll) in the family, and about John Ross. But fewer people know about the fued between him and Major Ridge, and how it affected the ultimate loss of the Cherokee homeland. This book takes the reader back to the beginning, to their births and how they were raised and brought up. This allows the reader to see how they became so close, but also allows for the differences they had. From this the tribe was split, and ultimately suffered losses within the Civil War, and the loss of their land via the Trail of tears. Sedgwick does an amazing job with bringing an amazing amount of research to a readable prose, so that it is not dry and boring, but heartwrenching and understandable to the reader. From our family history, I knew some of this story, the rest I had researched on my own, but Sedwick filled out the story SO well, I fill there are no gaps for the reader! Once you read this story, it may give you a VERY different view about what was taken from the tribe and by whom, and make you realise race relations were an even bigger issue before slavery became the beacon for it in our country. This is a must read to learning the truth of American history!