The Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half-Savage

by Alix E. Harrow

Oona's blood is a river delta blending east and west, her hair red as Tennessee clay, her heart tangled as the wild lands she maps. By tracing rivers in ink on paper, Oona pins the land down to one reality and betrays her people. Can she escape the bonds of gold and blood and bone that tie her to the Imperial American River Company?

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Magical Realism, Historical, Adult

30 pages, ebook

First published December 14, 2016

About the author

a former academic, adjunct, cashier, blueberry-harvester, and kentuckian, alix e. harrow is now a full-time writer living in virginia with her husband and their semi-feral kids.

she is the hugo award-winning and nyt-bestselling author of THE TEN THOUSAND DOORS OF JANUARY (2019), THE ONCE AND FUTURE WITCHES (2020), a duology of fairytale novellas (A SPINDLE SPLINTERED and A MIRROR MENDED), and various short fiction. her next book, STARLING HOUSE will be out on halloween 2023!

her writing is represented by kate mckean at howard morhaim literary agency.

newsletter: https://writtenworld.substack.com/
email: alixeharrow at gmail.com
insta: alix.e.harrow

Reviews

[Elena May · Rating 4 out of 5]

One word: magical

In a semi-historical, semi-alternate-universe North American setting, the land itself is resisting colonization. The land is wild, untamed, alive. It has many faces, many fluid shapes. Just like a map, it can wriggle, twist, curve, tear itself apart and stick its own pieces together at unexpected places, the drawn lines fading away or blurring. Only mapmakers can hold it still, so that colonizers can settle it and keep it fixed.

In our language, the word for mapmaker is also the word for traitor.

Atmospheric, imaginative, with clever pseudo-historical references and vivid characters. The baddie was a bit one note, but for a short story this makes sense.

The only thing that felt a bit off was how generic the Native character was and the implication that the lines between tribes blur together, while in reality many clearly distinct cultures exist.

[carol. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. This should have won things. Very powerful story of a mapmaking 'half-breed' woman and the taming of the West.
Along the lines of "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience," but better.

Does contain footnotes which I found rather distracting. Not sure what Harrow was going for with them (shreds of white legitimacy?). Since it was published in 2016, I'll blame the terrible influence of such books as Jonathan Strange.

https://www.tor.com/2016/12/14/the-au...

Thanks to Tadiana Night Owl for the link and rec.


Cross posted at https://wordpress.com/post/clsiewert.... because I have yet to delete a review.

[Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars for this Tor short story, free online here at Tor.com. It's by Alix Harrow, who wrote the just-published The Ten Thousand Doors of January which is getting ALL kinds of buzz, and also A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies, which just won the Hugo award. She has the chops!

Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:

In the early 1900’s, the land west of the Mississippi River is a place where the land is fey, constantly shifting and changing, evading the Easterners’ efforts to conquer and settle the land. Oona, a half-breed Amerind, is one of the few people who have the ability to be a “mapmaker,” forcing the land to hold to a particular shape and keep it.

Without us, the land won’t lie still. It writhes and twists beneath their compasses, so that a crew of surveyors might make the most meticulous measurements imaginable, plotting out each hill and bluff and bend in the river, and when they return the next day everything is a mirror image of itself. Or the river splits in two and one branch wanders off into hills that shimmer slightly in the dawn, or the bluffs are now far too high to climb and must be gone around. Or the crew simply disappears and returns weeks later looking hungry and haunted.

Oona works for a company of surveyors of the Imperial American River Company, who are exploring the frontier, helping them by stabilizing the land. She’s viewed as a traitor by Native Americans, despite the fact that she despises her job and especially hates the leader of the company, John Clayton. It gradually becomes apparent why Oona is forced to work for Clayton. She may be able to escape his tyranny, but freedom will carry a heavy cost.

“The Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half-Savage” is a beautifully written and richly imagined story, exploring Oona’s conflicting emotions and the difficulties of her life in an alternative version of U.S. history. The story is given additional heft and humor by several quasi-scholarly footnotes, discussing, for example, Sir Marcus Polo and his memoir of his exploration of the western frontier in America. I liked the play on the concept of “settling” the land.

I have a couple of minor quibbles: Clayton is a cardboard villain without much depth, and I was bit distracted by the notion, mentioned in one of the footnotes but not really relevant to the story, that in this world the lines between the various Amerind tribes have blurred. But otherwise this was an excellent story, examining the darker side of manifest destiny.

[karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!

last year, amy(other amy) tipped me off to this cool thing she was doing: the short story advent calendar, where you sign up to this thingie here and you get a free story each day.

i dropped the ball and by the time i came to my senses, it had already sold out, so for december project, i'm going rogue and just reading a free online story a day of my choosing. this foolhardy endeavor is going to screw up my already-deep-in-the-weeds review backlog, so i don't think i will be reviewing each individual story "properly." i might just do a picture review or - if i am feeling wicked motivated, i will draw something, but i can't be treating each short story like a real book and spending half my day examining and dissecting it, so we'll just see what shape this project takes as we go.

and if you know of any particularly good short stories available free online, let me know! i'm no good at finding them myself unless they're on the tor.com site, and i only have enough at this stage of the game to fill half my calendar. <--- that part is no longer true, but i am still interested in getting suggestions!

DECEMBER 17

I closed my eyes again, feeling the land sliding again into the place I wanted to go least in the world. There is no reasoning with it, no forcing it. Mapmakers don’t make the land; we only hold fast to whichever shape it gives us. I walked forward.

another beautiful tor short. seriously - any of you who might be reading this who haven't yet taken advantage of the stories tor puts out there for free need to start taking advantage of 'em, because while they're not all spectacular, enough of them are jaw-droppingly good that you're only hurting yourself by not rushing over there weekly to see what's new. this one even has FOOTNOTES! and it's all the things i love - densely plotted, haunting and bittersweet, beautiful imagery and just the right balance of realism and magical elements. this author has just made my watch list.

read it for yourself here:

http://www.tor.com/2016/12/14/the-aut...

DECEMBER 1: FABLE - CHARLES YU
DECEMBER 2: THE REAL DEAL - ANDY WEIR
DECEMBER 3: THE WAYS OF WALLS AND WORDS - SABRINA VOURVOULIAS
DECEMBER 4: GHOSTS AND EMPTIES - LAUREN GROFF
DECEMBER 5: THE RETURN OF THE THIN WHITE DUKE - NEIL GAIMAN
DECEMBER 6: WHEN THE YOGURT TOOK OVER - JOHN SCALZI
DECEMBER 7: A CHRISTMAS PAGEANT - DONNA TARTT
DECEMBER 8: DEEP - PHILIP PLAIT
DECEMBER 9: COOKIE JAR - STEPHEN KING
DECEMBER 10: THE STORY OF KAO YU - PETER S. BEAGLE
DECEMBER 11: THE HEEBIE-JEEBIES - ALAN BEARD
DECEMBER 12: THE TOMATO THIEF - URSULA VERNON
DECEMBER 13: THE JAWS THAT BITE, THE CLAWS THAT CATCH - SEANAN MCGUIRE
DECEMBER 14: ROLLING IN THE DEEP - JULIO ALEXI GENAO
DECEMBER 15: ANTIHYPOXIANT - ANDY WEIR
DECEMBER 16: THE AMBUSH - DONNA TARTT
DECEMBER 18: THE CHRISTMAS SHOW - PAT CADIGAN
DECEMBER 19: THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS - PAUL CORNELL
DECEMBER 20: THE TRAINS THAT CLIMB THE WINTER TREE - MICHAEL SWANWICK
DECEMBER 21: BLUE IS A DARKNESS WEAKENED BY LIGHT - SARAH MCCARRY
DECEMBER 22: WATERS OF VERSAILLES - KELLY ROBSON
DECEMBER 23: RAZORBACK - URSULA VERNON
DECEMBER 24: DIARY OF AN ASSCAN - ANDY WEIR
DECEMBER 25: CHANGING MEANINGS - SEANAN MCGUIRE
DECEMBER 26: SHOGGOTHS IN BLOOM - ELIZABETH BEAR
DECEMBER 27: THE CARTOGRAPHY OF SUDDEN DEATH - CHARLIE JANE ANDERS
DECEMBER 28: FRIEDRICH THE SNOW MAN - LEWIS SHINER
DECEMBER 29: DRESS YOUR MARINES IN WHITE - EMMY LAYBOURNE
DECEMBER 30: AM I FREE TO GO? - KATHRYN CRAMER
DECEMBER 31: OLD DEAD FUTURES - TINA CONNOLLY

come to my blog!

[Dannii Elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual rating 4.5/5 stars.

Oona is a whole made from the halves of two different people. She is consigned to belong to neither but she will always belong to the land. Even after she betrays it for a decade it will always have her back.

This is was a sorrowful, unsettling, fantastical, and magical tale, which seems to be Harrow's unique signature. This was partly a historical insight to North American colonisation, partly a homage to both the land and the people who honour it, and partly a purely wonderous and whimsical creation.

[Kerri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange and wonderful -- I loved this short story and am looking forward to reading the authors novel, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, when it comes out.

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historical, mildly fantasy, this short story is nonetheless heartbreaking and evocative of the whole Company Town mentality. More than anything, it is the drive to live and survive despite being under the power of so many other forces beyond your control that makes this such an emotional tale.

Let's just tack on a decade of forced labor because you're not doing your job. Shame on you for not putting the needs of US over YOU.

Of course, this is absolutely about being marginalized, so beware or forwarned. It could happen to us all.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

Oona is a mapmaker. A traitor who is born of two worlds. She is the East and the West, and leads expeditions of men intent on claiming her homelands for themselves. The only thing keeping her grounded is her sick brother, and the exploitation of this by the expedition leader. But Oona longs to escape, to run free to explore and reclaim what is hers by right.

The writing is beautiful, lyrical but not overly done. I also liked Oona and her relationship with her brother. They share a close bond that is well described and developed in a short amount of time. My issue really comes with the world building, which I found lacking in depth. Given that it focuses on Native American culture and mythology, I found the author really didn't drive deep enough.

Beautiful writing, but lacks world building.

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This was really good.

Imagine a world where places aren‘t fixed. Where rivers don‘t only snake in our language but in actuality, where mountains move and flowers and trees roam the land. Ever shifting.
Welcome to the West.
There is another continent though, the East. The people that live there cannot understand the magical wild land and thus are trying desperately to conquer it.
Enter Oona, daughter of a Westerner women and an Easterner lover she took briefly. Since both sides hate one another, you can imagine what a „half-breed“ child has to go through, even at the hands of her own relatives.
But she has her brother, Ira, son of yet another lover their mother took once. Sadly, it often is the people we love that become our greatest weakness unless we are vigilant.
Oona becomes a so-called mapmaker in order to provide for her brother. Mapmakers, in this world, have the ability to let the land settle and hold it in the position of their mind‘s eye so there is no shifting. They are therefore employed by the Great Eastern River Company that wants to explore and finally tame all the land - which marks mapmakers as traitors to all Westerners.

We have the magically wild and „savage“ landscape of the West versus the „civilized“ East that is choking on oil. And we have family ties that run deeper than any tree‘s roots.

Naturally, there are some historical similarities to our world that the author thus addressed by design. It’s your choice if you read it as a parable or as „just“ a very creative fantasy story.

The story is written in a rather wonderful way that lets you imagine all the places the expeditions are going to, that lets you feel Ira‘s physical pain and Oona‘s emotional torment. Best of all, though, is the setting itself that I could have roamed through forever.

You can read it for free here: https://www.tor.com/2016/12/14/the-au...

[Dee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! How is it that this short story hasnt won any awards? Confused.

This haunting and brilliantly written story really pulls you in. The depth of imagery explained here and the situation oona is living in completely has you hooked from start to finish.
I am in awe of Alix Harrows style. This story has a creepy, raw and honest elements that flow so well. She really brings out your feelings in contrast with what is invloved in this story. I felt myself getting upset for ooona. Angry also for her situation.

Well written, intriguing, didnt want it to end.

[Mitticus · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 living land stars.

Oona es una mestiza marcada desde su nacimiento a ser un 'mapmaker' que en su idioma es igual a 'traidora'. La Cia necesita mapas para 'afianzar' la tierra, someterla y edificar sobre ella su propia civilizacion. El concepto no es realmente nuevo, recuerdo claramente la historia de las tierras vivas en una antologia que lei hace un montón de años atrás. La forma en que describe el conflicto sí lo es. Es un autor interesante a seguir que saldrá más tarde.

I was the expedition’s mapmaker, the men’s safety and sanity, but none of them could bring themselves to trust a half-savage. Except Clayton. Although perhaps trust is the wrong word—when a person ties a noose around your heart and holds the end of the rope in their palm, do they really need to trust you?

El viejo conflicto entre la gente del este y la forma en que se apodera y trastorna la forma de vida de los 'salvajes' tampoco es muy nuevo. Pero como digo, hay algo fuerte en como se expresa.

Free to read in Tor:
http://www.tor.com/2016/12/14/the-aut...

[Amanda NEVER MANDY · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of a woman that can tame the land by holding it in place with her mind long enough for surveyors to pin it down permanently. I really enjoyed this concept and would have liked to see more from it minus most of the adjectives that were used. I felt they distracted from the story instead of adding to it. When every sentence is heavy with at least two or three extra bits of sugar the dessert story is only good for the first few bites. Not many want to stick around to lick the plate.

[Paul Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.


This is one of the things I love about anthologies, that they are so often filled with perfect gems from authors I would not otherwise encounter. Alix Harrow's story is set in an alternative America where the land is resisting colonisation, where the native peoples have a connection with the land that, Mythago Wood-like, confound attempts to force settlement - but, while into the early 20th Century the United States has barely reached the Mississippi, it still seems that the technology and perseverance and cruelty of the European settlers will dominate.


The POV character is Oona, the progeny of a drunken Irishman and a native Amerind woman, employed through necessity as a Mapmaker, someone able to help the invaders find their way into the hostile land. Harrow wonderfully portrays the dichotomy of seeking to earn a living in the economy imposed by the white man while betraying her own heritage and a people who have shunned her half-breed nature. We also get a glimpse, via footnote, into wider world of native magic; of the headwaters of the Nile being an inland ocean populated by gods, of Ireland filled with hallucinatory mists and transient fairy mounds.


Just beautiful.

[Corrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. What a wonderful short story this was. Such beautiful language. Now I need to read this author's book The Ten Thousand Doors of January.

5 stars

[Arie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This had moments of extreme beauty and wonder, and others that made me very uncomfortable - not in the story as such, but in the approach to it.

Though there are shared experiences and parallels, the context of colonisation is different here than on Turtle Island, which is the land this story appears to be based on, and I cannot speak to those experiences. But there are comments on the original story that put words to some of my unnamed discomfort and I suggest reading those for nuance. Still read this, yes, it's a beautiful story, but proceed with caution.

[boogenhagen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this cause my friend Chi gave it five stars - it was excellent and well worth the read!

find it here

https://www.tor.com/2016/12/14/the-au...

Totally awesome comeuppance and I would devour a whole book of this character and her world.

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars. Incredible combo of historical fiction and fantasy, and one of the best of the (usually outstanding) Tor shorts I've read.

Read it for yourself here: https://www.tor.com/2016/12/14/the-au...

[Lawson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved everything about this short story. Alix E. Harrow has not let me down yet. ʅ（◞‿◟）ʃ

[Chi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ooooh, that was one very, creepy read. I loved it! (Especially the comeuppance - nice!)

[Phoenix2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short e book with a compelling story. I liked the lead, who was realistic and original. I did get confused when it came to the whole magic thing. But overall, I enjoyed it.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird and wonderful. Ms. Harrow has quite an imagination and her gifted prose sucks you right into an alternate history that suddenly seems more real than the past you’ve known and learned about all your life.

[Hirondelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is fantastic, as expected, the world very vivid and lots of fun (the footnotes, the alternate universe), though I ended up feeling slightly disappointed with plot or themes (Colonialism and exploration is oppressive to natives. Nice when they can escape it). But the bar set by some of her other short stories is incredibly high so my disappointment, if that is, is only in that context, by everybody else I would be looking for her backlist.

[Samantha Matherne · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a short story this tale has a lot of depth. Oona could’ve had a much longer tale with more details about her past, her time working for Clayton, and her future, but enough is given here to make it all still satisfying. So much life breathed into the characters in less than 50 pages. The footnotes are clever, and I would be thrilled to see Harrow write a full historical fantasy novel (on Oona or entirely new characters) with footnotes included.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird West in the vein of Laura Anne Gilman's West Wind's Fool: and Other Stories of the Devil's West . Just ok for me. Compared to Gilman's more complete world, Harrow could have done a lot more with the mapmaking "power" central to her story. Feels like this idea needed to gestate a bit longer before putting pen to paper. Promising but underwhelming.

[Lata · Rating 4 out of 5]

A woman is coerced into leading a team of surveyors into uncharted land westwards, her mapmaking skills critical to finding safe passage. Oona Sawgrass is kept compliant with assurances her younger and gravely ill brother Ira will receive treatment.
A story about what a person is forced to live with, and what she’ll do to be free. It’s heartbreaking and fierce.

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh my this woman can write. Just wonderful. Beautiful and heartbreaking.

[Reader of Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was very good! I enjoyed Oona's character, the whole story was neat and intense. Alix E Harrow continues to fascinate me with her words and works of art! 5 ⭐!

[GoldGato · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do I love thee, Tor.com? Short stories of fantasy and other-worldliness that are exceptionally well written will always have a soft spot in my reads. And so, Tor hits another one right out of the ballpark.

Funerals in the West are fleeting things, like black hounds padding past you in the night.

The United States is in the midst of its Manifest Destiny, full of Lewis & Clarks and purposeful surveyors. The East has been tamed and now the same men are heading into the West, with their grasping ache for land and more land. But this is an alternate take on history and the Amerind culture will not be so easily overwhelmed.

In our language, the word for mapmaker is also the word for traitor.

The squiggly Eastern states, so closely bordered and populated, are hemmed in by the Mississippi, the mighty river separating the land of the rectangle West, where the mountains still hide a thousand secrets. The tale's narrator is also a mapmaker, gifted with the ability to hold the land in place for the profiteers. This is a story of shifting sands and Marcus Polo and tuberculosis. And such lovely words.

The land sliding past the train windows was old and well-settled, utterly quiescent beneath the plows and plantation crops, as though it was distantly embarrassed by the mischievous shapeshifting of its youth.

Book Season = Winter (red buffalo)

[Aditi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm conflicted.

I have always loved Alix Harrow's writing style. She's talented at spinning worlds out of words and decisively whirling the reader into increasingly fantastical settings. I also appreciate the speculative nature of Harrow's works - how she'll pick a setting, pick a historical occurrence, and tack on a what if? that changes the very nature of the story she's telling.

But I don't know how I feel about the subject matter. It was a well-crafted story, of course. But I found myself uneasy at the mysticality of the West (referring to Indigenous/Native tribes and their cultures) compared to the lack of magic in the East (Europe). I recognized that she tried to dance around it in other ways - by saying that it was the land, not the people that are magical - but the heart of the story presents it otherwise. It's a rudimentary understanding of colonial dynamics and one that, by exoticizing Native Americans, presents them as the "other".

I don't subscribe to the belief that a white author must not write a protagonist of color, or a straight author shouldn't write a queer protagonist, and so on. I think that does much more harm than good, and that it pushes us in the opposite direction of progress.

But I'm not sure why Harrow picked this story, of all the possible stories, to tell. The protagonist's story is inevitably about race, and the author simply didn't know how to handle it cleanly.

[Lanika · Rating 5 out of 5]

super gorgeous imagery. really interesting representation of the land, loved the way Harrow played with the genre of Settler Travel Log/Autobiography. the footnote device was effective but not overused.

recommended to me by Ariel Merriam 💖