William Heath

On Night Moves in Ohio These narratives are by turns poignant, funny, and starkly realistic. They are the human stories of the mid-twentieth century industrial mid-west. The honest sentiments of these poems remind us how a centrality of setting, as much time as place, form our experience into themes. Every poem is engrossing, teeming with fascinating storyline detail and imagery. -William Hathaway, author of Dawn Chorus: New and Selected Poems In this remarkable collection, William Heath mourns and celebrates an almost vanished way of life: sometime brutal yet intensely human. A world that, tough as it is, is consistently shot through with its own wry, mordant humor. These poems are savvy and lively, as exact as a high jumper's focus, quick and accurate as a tennis player's eye, wrist, ankle. Night Moves in Ohio is Heath's own remembrance of things past-an autobiography in rapt miniature of his unforgotten early life, mercilessly but compassionately lit by the laser-light of memory. -Eamon Grennan, author of Out of Sight: New & Selected Poems On The Walking Man William Heath is in my opinion one of the most brilliantly accomplished and gifted young poets to appear in the United States in quite some time. I am especially moved by the delicacy and precision of the language, which indicates a distinguished intelligence, and by the purity and depth of feeling in all of his poems. -James Wright, author of Above the River: The Complete Poems

Born to Anglo-American parents on the Appalachian frontier, captured by the Miami Indians at the age of thirteen, and adopted into the tribe, William Wells (1770-1812) moved between two cultures all his life but was comfortable in neither. Vilified by some historians for his divided loyalties, he remains relatively unknown even though he is worthy of comparison with such famous frontiersmen as Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. William Heath's thoroughly researched book is the first biography of this man-in-the-middle. A servant of empire with deep sympathies for the people his country sought to dispossess, Wells married Chief Little Turtle's daughter and distinguished himself as a Miami warrior, as an American spy, and as an Indian agent whose multilingual skills made him a valuable interpreter. Heath examines pioneer life in the Ohio Valley from both white and Indian perspectives, yielding rich insights into Wells's career as well as broader events on the post-revolutionary American frontier, where Anglo-Americans pushing westward competed with the Indian nations of the Old Northwest for control of territory. Wells's unusual career, Heath emphasizes, earned him a great deal of ill will. Because he warned the U.S. government against Tecumseh's confederacy and the Tenskwatawa's ""religiously mad"" followers, he was hated by those who supported the Shawnee leaders. Because he came to question treaties he had helped bring about, and cautioned the Indians about their harmful effects, he was distrusted by Americans. Wells is a complicated hero, and his conflicted position reflects the decline of coexistence and cooperation between two cultures.

First published in 1798, this Revolutionary War memoir is one of the few ever written by a senior Continental Army commander. It provides a unique glimpse into the administrative operations and inner workings of the army during the American Revolution. Major General William Heath offers rare insights on the war's major military personalities on both the American and British sides. Of particular interest are his wartime interactions with British generals John Burgoyne and William Phillips, as well as Continental Army generals such as George Washington and Charles Lee. Heath's memoir also gives readers a detailed look at the constant struggles faced by the army, including food, supply, personnel and funding shortages, and presents an almost daily chronicle of the tribulations and successes experienced by patriot forces during the war.

Winner of the Hackney Literary Award and selected in 2002 by Time as one of the eleven best novels on the African American experience, The Children Bob Moses Led is a compelling, powerful chronicle of the events of Freedom Summer. The novel is narrated in alternating sections by Tom Morton, a white college student who joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for the summer, and Bob Moses, the charismatic leader of the Mississippi Summer Project. With clarity and honesty, Heath’s novel recalls the bittersweet spirit of the 1960s and conveys the hopeful idealism of the young students as they begin to understand both the harsh reality faced by those they try to help and the enormity of the oppression they must overcome.