Send a Runner

March 19, 2021

In this work, Eskeets and Kristofic (Navajos Wear Nikes) collaborate to tell the story of Eskeets completing an ultrarun to honor survivors of the Long Walk; the book also includes a condensed history of the Din� people. The authors explain the history of the Long Walk, when, between 1863 and 1866, the U.S. military marched Din� men, women, and children 250 to 450 milesfrom their ancestral lands to the Bosque Redondo Reservation in current-day New Mexico. Eskeets and Kristofic do an effective job weaving stories together with metaphors for acknowledging pain--both the physical toll of Eskeets's run and the inherited trauma passed down through generations of his Din� family. The poetic passages by Kristofic (who grew up on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona but isn't an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation) thoroughly trace these long-lasting impacts. The book uses appropriate terms from the Din� language to refer to the people and places of the Navajo Nation. Possibly the only deficit of this book is that it doesn't explore in more detail the health care inequities facing the Navajo Nation and other Indigenous peoples in the U.S. VERDICT This memoir is a solid read for patrons who would like to learn more about the Long Walk, and for patrons who would like to know more about Din� culture.--Allison Gallaspy, Tulane University, LA

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2021
Marathons are 26.2 miles long. They put the immune system under serious stress, and doctors often tell marathoners they'll need a week to recuperate from muscle fatigue. To set out to run 12 marathons in 15 days at the age of 59 requires brazen defiance and superhuman prowess. In 2018, Eskeets, a longtime educator and at one time an Olympic track-and-field hopeful, embarked on a 330-mile run from Arizona to east New Mexico to commemorate the Long Walk. In 1864, General James Carleton, who once ordered every Navajo dead, forced captured Navajos to trek 350 miles through snowstorms without proper nourishment. Kristofic weaves together episodes from the genocidal frontier history of the American southwest and Eskeets' heroic commemorative run in this transhistorical work that weds accounts of unspeakable violence conspicuously missing from most American history textbooks and a contemporary story of resilience and remembrance. Running connects Eskeets to a legacy of Native American ultrarunner messengers, to a beautiful yet marred natural landscape, and to sacred plants which inspire him to keep going.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from February 15, 2021
The story of a 59-year-old Din� (Navajo) man and his 16-day, 330-mile run to honor the Long Walk of the Navajo. Co-written by Eskeets, a runner, coach, and artist, and Kristofic, a Taos-based journalist who grew up on a Navajo reservation in Arizona, the book follows two stories: first, Eskeets' plan to run 330 miles ("a marathon a day") to commemorate the Long Walk, "the forced removal of most of the Din� people to a military-controlled reservation on the Pecos River in south-central New Mexico" between 1864 and 1868; second, a chronicle of the Long Walk in historical context. Eskeets, supported by friends and family throughout the run, and Kristofic, his friend, provide fascinating portraits of both the beauty and physical punishment of the journey, smoothly alternating with a history of the Din� people. The authors recount the grim historical realities that faced the Din� over the centuries: arrival of the Spanish, kidnapping and selling of Din� children into slavery, murder and betrayal, the movement of White Americans across their territory, and the continued attacks on their people. With starkly beautiful prose, the authors bring all of this to urgent life, vividly depicting the numerous outbreaks of brutal violence and clearly demonstrating the remarkable resiliency of the Din�. "Go seek out 'The Flood' by Robert Frost. Read that poem," they write. "In the time required to read that poem, fifteen people are murdered outside Fort Fauntleroy....The shells explode over them and shrapnel pops through their bodies. Twenty people run no more forever." The authors' chronicle of Eskeets' impressive feat highlights the otherworldly beauty of the American Southwest, from Canyon de Chelly (a "spiritual center" once described by mythologist Joseph Campbell as "the most sacred place on earth") in Arizona to Santa Fe, New Mexico. A unique, important addition to the literature on the Navajo.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.