If you’ve seen Ken Burns’ film The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, then you’re already acquainted with the work of Shelton Johnson, author of this groundbreaking work of historical fiction. Born in inner-city Detroit, Johnson is as interpretive park ranger in Yosemite, where he researches and brings to life the stories of African American cavalry soldiers who serves as the Sierra Nevada’s earliest park rangers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
After years of researching and documenting the role that “buffalo soldiers” played in protecting the West’s national parks after the Civil War, Gloryland is Johnson’s first novel. It tells the story of Elijah Yancy, the free-born African American and Native American son of sharecroppers, who grows up in the Reconstruction-era South. After joining the U.S. Cavalry, Elijah fights in the Indian Wars of the West before being posted to Yosemite National Park in the early 1900s. In the great tradition of John Muir, Elijah finally finds peace in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Not only does this novel bring to light an important, but often overlooked skein of American history, it does so in a lyrical, moving way. The author’s own passion for nature shines through in this historical tale of freedom, bloodshed, and the quest for individualism in a new nation still trying to heal from the wounds of slavery, civil war and fighting on the Western frontier.
To find out more about buffalo soldiers and their important place in the history of Yosemite National Park and the giant sequoia forests of the Sierra Nevada, click here.
