Caleb Fox, Author
By: Caleb Fox 11/03/2009
"Redskin on one side of the mountain, redskin on the other" is what my aunts told me when I was a teen. My Cherokee family came to Arkansas on what was later known as the Trail of Tears. Someone in the family, though, decided that we should pass for white. I’ve always wondered what it felt like to those who weren’t light enough to pass as white, what a schism like that does to a family.
The Cherokee originally called themselves “People of the Caves.” Zadayi Red is about their predecessors, those who lived before Europeans “discovered” this continent.
Zadayi Red is actually not my debut novel; it’s my debut Fantasy novel. I’ve written a number of books under another name, mostly historical novels.
Dahzi is a young man on a classic hero's journey. The template is Joseph Campbell’s description of the hero’s journey—a call to a great deed or adventure, the crossing into some different world, finding a guide, encountering many obstacles and enemies, coming to a great climax and, in the end, returning to the community with some kind of boon for them.
Mark Twain is the beginning of American fiction. He wrote in the language of ordinary Americans, for an audience of Americans, with American values.
John Neihardt, author of Black Elk Speaks, taught me the power in the forgotten citizens of the West—the mountain men and especially the Indians. He was the first person I sensed was a great man (even though we disagreed about everything).
Split between Dixie and Yankee, I grew up in Arkansas and St. Louis. Feeling like a hick in St. Louis. Loving the mountains and lakes of Arkansas, but living in a city, and discovering music through that, which was great.
Tony Hillerman was a friend and a good man. I can’t use him as a model—we’re too different as writers—but I valued his friendship. I do plan, before long, to write a lot about the Navajo people. I live among them and know them.
Happiness is being with my wife, the splendid center of my life, every day. My family. Writing (the creative process, not the business). Playing music. Watching baseball and movies.
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