Cherokee Tragedy: The Ridge Family and the Decimation of a People by Thurman WilkinsMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Despite its lurid title, the book really focuses on the lives of Major and John Ridge. Any account of their lives is inevitably also going to be about the Trail of Tears, but this book chooses to focus mostly on the earlier parts of their lives, even going into details of John Ridge's marriage to his wife. Of course, given that these men were two of the most important Cherokee leaders of the day, much of the account is political in nature. The text can get pretty dry.
All in all, I'd call it a pretty good read, but I do have one big reservation about it. For some reason, the author felt the need to approach the Ross/Ridge divide as a partisan for the Ridges and he is unrelenting both in his defense of the Ridges and his criticism of John Ross. This bias got entirely too intrusive by the end of the book. Even if the author believed in the rightness of the Ridges' actions, he had no place fighting the Ross/Ridge battle in his book, which should have been an impartial history of the men.
Still, it's not a bad addition to the knowledge of anyone who's serious about knowing Cherokee history, so I'd recommend it.
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