The Signs Are Everywhere - an Editorial Review of "Land Shadows"

Book Blurb:

Winner of the Maxy Award

First Runner-Up for Historical Fiction, Eric Hoffer Award

Shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize

Land Shadows is a sweeping historical saga spanning the Scottish Highlands, Gilded Age New York, and the contested lands of New Mexico. At its heart is Murdoch McNeil, an orphaned boy shaped by loss and ambition, and Kewanee, a Potawatomi girl resisting forced assimilation at the Carlisle Indian School. Their lives entwine across decades as they confront questions of land, legacy, and identity in a country rewriting its own truth.

Orphaned during the Highland Clearances, Murdoch claws his way into New York's legal elite—only to stake everything on a forged deed in New Mexico’s Maxwell Land Grant. As the U.S. government sorts fraud from legitimacy, Murdoch uproots his family to defend a lie, dragging them into a battle over belonging, justice, and truth.

Told through multiple perspectives and rich with historical detail, Land Shadows explores America’s westward expansion—not just through conquest, but through compromise, betrayal, and resilience.

Winner of the Eric Hoffer Da Vinci Eye AwardFinalist for the Eric Hoffer First Horizon Award

Named one of Shelf Unbound’s Top 100 Notable Indie Books

Kirkus Reviews: “Poignant & engaging.”

Book Buy Link: https://geni.us/xuF3Mt

Editorial Review:

Title: Land Shadows

Author: R.J. Striegel

Rating: 4.0

“The signs are everywhere, but nobody wants to see them. They are blind. I will be forced from my home… the only one my family has known since the 1600s. We are being forced out to make room for Gordon’s sheep… We’ve been here on this land since the MacDonald’s and the McNeil’s were at each other’s throats, centuries ago and when they made their peace centuries ago…”

This passage which has been captured from the first pages of “Land Shadows” by R.J. Striegel, a dramatized interpretation of past events, suffuse with a sense of impending doom which the reader knows before even the characters do. James McNeil, a crofter with a proud family history is angry at the absurdity of displacing families who have lived on the land for centuries, to make room for sheep. The reader feels the injustice viscerally, the depth of what is about to be taken from him, and the weight of time where a single decision will just like that end centuries of survival.

“At Randall’s Island, we had to eat what was available when we could, and I told myself that I’d worry about tomorrow’s food tomorrow. I cleared off Mr. Childs’ desk and made sure there was not a crumb left. He probably wouldn’t have liked me eating my food there or even sitting there, but he wasn’t around anyhow.”

Years later following James’ death, his son Murdoch is introduced as a survivor from the Randall’s Island orphan asylum where he endured beatings and hunger, among other atrocities. The reader sees him as a child who takes care of himself because there is no one else to do that for him, and one who has been made the way he is by a system, including the brutal orphan system, and abandonment of immigrant children. The reader hopes that the emotions he carries, including a trauma that runs deep, will not work against him as an adult but will help shape the man that he will become.

“What I’m coming to is to run the day-to-day operations and provide sound business management, I’ve asked Murdoch to oversee freight and cattle in New Mexico Territory… he’s been traveling regularly to smooth out our operations there, and now he’s agreed to move with his family to our ranch just outside the town of Cimarron.” “Please raise your glasses to his success!”

This moment at Murdoch and Anne’s ninth anniversary party in New York City captures Murdoch’s father-in-law’s announcement that Murdoch will be moving his family to Mexico to manage the ranch and freighting operations. The reader knows with a knot of unease that this is not how a healthy family decision is made, especially because it will mean that Anne will once again give up everything and this time, without being consulted. The reader senses that the announcement might actually be an end to something, especially because of the growing tension and a undeniable deep-seated sadness in Murdoch, that almost feels tragic.

This story uses first person present tense in the first pages, letting the reader experience events as they happen in James’ mind and life. This allows immersion just as much as physical sensations in real time on the reader, all while trapping them in a place where the illusion of that everything will be okay feels impossible. Emotion is conveyed through action, physical detail and what is left unsaid, for example when Murdoch describes his survival strategy without necessarily saying he was hungry and maybe he thought he would die. A statement like ‘Do what you have to do to acquire land and do what you have to do to keep it’ is among phrases that have been repeated to create thematic resonance across generations. In the story, smoke dances, the reader can smell it and see it. Violence is reported briefly rather than in a graphic manner. These visceral details tethers the reader in the moment, as if they are living inside its weight, breathe by breathe.

Since the novel spans decades and generations, its structure will mostly appeal to lovers of sweeping family sagas that trace how history shape individual lives across time. Its native characters are central to the story, as does the Maxwell’s Land Grant and the Supreme court’s decision. This makes the read also appealing to those interested in indigenous dispossession, as well as in the role the law has in shaping communities. “Land Shadows” by R.J. Striegel is the kind of novel that lingers because it asks questions that don’t have easy answers, and two, because it refuses to let the customer look away from the moral complexities of its characters and their world. Its opening weight and question of what one is willing to do to keep what they have makes it a memorable read.

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