Upcoming novel[edit]
David is the author of a forthcoming novel to be published by Bloomsbury Publishing in February 2017. The Coming is an epic novel of Native/White relations in North America, told through the life of Daytime Smoke -- a real historical figure, the red-haired son of William Clark and a Nez Perce woman. The novel begins in 1805, as Lewis and Clark stumble out of the Rockies, on the edge of starvation. The Nez Perce feed the explorers and help them build canoes and navigate the rapids of Columbia, then spend two months hosting them the following spring, before leading them back across the snowbound mountains.
This marks the beginning of a deep and lasting friendship between the two cultures. The Nez Perce befriend American fur trappers, invite missionaries, and even help the U.S. in its wars with neighboring tribes. But when gold is discovered on Nez Perce lands in 1860, it sets an inevitable tragedy in motion. Seventeen years later, when the U.S. military forces all Nez Perce bands onto a reservation, the last great Indian war breaks out.
Daytime Smoke's life spanned the seven decades between first contact and defeat of the Nez Perce. The Coming thus captures the trajectory experienced by so many Native peoples: from friendship and cooperate to betrayal, war, and genocide. With a large cast of characters and a vast geography, the novel braids historical events with the drama of one man's life. Rigorously researched and cinematically rendered, The Coming is a page-turning historical novel.[5]