Sherman Alexie meets William Gibson. Louise Erdrich meets Franz Kafka. Leslie Marmon Silko meets Philip K. Dick. However you might want to put it, this is Native American fiction in a whole new world. A surrealistic revisiting of the Cherokee Removal, Riding the Trail of Tears takes us to north Georgia in the near future, into a virtual-reality tourist compound where customers ride the Trail of Tears, and into the world of Tallulah Wilson, a Cherokee woman who works there. When several tourists lose consciousness inside the ride, employees and customers at the compound come to believe, naturally, that a terrorist attack is imminent.
Little does Tallulah know that Cherokee Little People have taken up residence in the virtual world and fully intend to change the ride-s programming to suit their own point of view. Told by a narrator who knows all but can hardly be trusted, in a story reflecting generations of experience while recalling the events in a