I absolutely LOVED this book! Shelton Johnson, a park ranger at Yosemite, presents this fictional memoir of an African American/Indian man named Elijah Yancy who leaves his home and family in South Carolina and ends up joining the army in the late 1800s. After travelling around the world fighting and killing those who just want freedom (a moral dilemma whose tragic irony is not lost on Elijah), his Calvary unit is assigned to patrol and protect the relatively new Yosemite National Park. Is it here that Elijah is able to fully come face-to-face with who he is and who he can be. Shelton's writing is simply superb, and you can feel his reverence for the Yosemite land in every word. There's also terrible tragedy amongst the beauty, as Elijah is repeatedly confronted by racism and violence. This is a very important book, not in the least because it tells the story of the buffalo soldiers, a sadly under-taught part of American history. My fingers are crossed that the next time I visit Yosemite, I cross paths with Ranger Johnson. ( )

A lyrical novel by an African American National Park Ranger about a man growing up in the Reconstruction South, becoming a Buffalo Soldier, and being assigned to patrol Yosemite where he is shaped by the beauty and the silence of the mountains.

Shelton Johnson is a Park Ranger at Yosemite National Park. He became interested in the Buffalo Soldiers who had served there in the early 1900s and created a living history performance about a man who had had that experience. Performed widely, it led to the writing of this book. Johnson is also a poet who writes prose that is surprisingly lyrical, especially for telling the story of a Buffalo Soldier. Occasionally Johnson turns to poetry in this book. I loved the incongruity of the language and the experiences described .as well as the beauty of the African American idiom in which the narrator, Elijah Yancy, tells his story. This was a book that left me wanting to quote from every page.
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Excellent concise lyrical writing. Very moving and emotional portrayal of racism is post-Civil War US. Beautiful "word paintings" of the grandeur of Yosemite National Park. ( )

Elijah Yancey was a Buffalo soldier in the U. S. Cavalry from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born black in Spartanburg, South Carolina, his coming of age reveals his desire to buck the system and his first attempts to try to break the color barrier. Fearing for his life, his parents ask him to leave and never come back.

He walks and walks and eventually ends up in Nebraska and signs up with the Calvary.

Therein begins a beautifully poetic book, written like a memoir, of Elijah and his ‘coming-to-grips’ with life, the U. S. Army, God, and eventually love. (Though we must accept that Elijah finds earthly love because he tells us this near the end of the book, it is a spiritual and inner love that is the most apparent for the reader.)

As the years of soldiering give way, so does the anger at how his race has been treated.
It grows into something else - a deep relationship with his ancestors (respect really) and an even deeper understanding of God from the canyons, meadows, stars and even grizzly bears (and mules) of Yosemite National Park.

It is his short time at Yosemite that takes hold of him forever. It is that time and the memories that it creates that help fill the hole of his missing home and family. Elijah’s introspection is surprisingly simple and yet deep, as seen here in his description of his awe at God’s land, from page 198:

"In general, we didn’t talk much on patrols, cause the mountains and valleys and meadow kept shutting us up. It seemed like God was usually talking in a big voice here and over there and round the bend yonder, and when God’s talking, you shut up."

Quotations at the beginning of each chapter from the “Cavalry Tactics” manual create a nice balance with the fine prose.

Only someone who has lived and worked at this National Park could portray it in such a personal and beautiful way and Johnson is that person, being a ranger at Yosemite. Johnson also draws from his own family’s history, an ancestor who was a Buffalo Soldier.

Gloryland will give you a peek into the painful time of southern African-Americans from the 1870s and on into the early struggles of desegregation within the U. S. Army. You will be bound to a man who eventually finds himself in a wonder-filled place and learns who he really is. It will leave you yearning for you own Yosemite. ( )