'Johnny’s Trail of Tears' by Kenneth Kapp
The Trail of Tears wasn’t taught in U.S. schools—at least until recently. Neither has the role in that death march by that man on the $20 bill, President Andrew Jackson, been recognized widely enough. Inspired by his Jewish heritage with its memories of the Holocaust, Milwaukee author Kenneth M. Kapp reexamines the Trail of Tears in an imaginative—let’s call it magical realist—work of fiction.
“Why write about something you know when it’s more exciting to write about something you don’t know,” Kapp says. “When I get curious about something, like the Trail of Tears, I can’t let go.”
Johnny’s Trail of Tears is set in the past, but not in the 1830s when Jackson ordered the ethnic cleansing of Cherokees and other nations from their ancestral lands in the American southeast, marching them with little sustenance to the bleak frontier that is now Oklahoma.
Kapp’s novel begins in 1948 when his teenage protagonist, Johnny, runs away from his troubled home in southern Illinois and makes for the West Coast, San Francisco specifically. He’s dressed in army fatigues from the surplus store, sold by a Jewish peddler who recurs through the story. Perhaps he’s one of the 36 Righteous People of Jewish lore whose intercessions and interventions prevent the world from fragmenting into utter chaos? Knowing nothing of the Trail of Tears, Johnny’s hitchhike to California is diverted and his journey snakes back to the original Cherokee homeland and around many sites along the Trail, including the appropriately named stockade where the Natives were held, Fort Payne, Alabama.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
The ghosts of indigenous people follow Johnny and haunt the American culture of his time. He reconstructs an Indian Pony, a popular make of motorcycle during the ‘40s, as his mount for part of his journey. Working as if in alliance with the Jewish peddler are Native American “Sentinels,” mystical figures who, as Kapp puts it, “move things along.” Johnny’s Trail of Tears is a Bildungsroman, a coming-of-age noel that reflects on the specters of America’s past.
Kapp will discuss his novel 5:30-7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26 at Lion’s Tooth, 2421 S. Kinnickinnic Ave.
