Toishan: Book One: In Words and Dreams and Songs

THE ADVENTURE BEGINS HERE:

[Book I: “In Words and Dreams and Song”]

Spanning more than 1,300 years and over forty-seven generations, Toishan bookmarks at key points in time the contributions of the Chinese men and women who built the American railroads.

Launching a delicate 5th Century junk from Toi-Shan Province in CE 496, the Most High Buddhist Priest Hoei-shin Ti initiates an incredible journey up the west coast of Japan, north past the Korean peninsula, along the Aleutian Islands, southeast toward Alaska, down the west coast of North America, to present-day California.

In 1865 some 1,369 years later his descendants and those of Sir Quentin Gnarr Roberts, an Irish immigrant, are conjoined in the most eloquent material work of both races. The construction of America's Transcontinental Railroad.

In six spellbinding works, Cashwell chronicles the return of the Chinese to California, and the arrival of the Irish, in an imaginative but highly believable alternate history of the discovery and ultimate assimilation of the American West.

John E. Cashwell is the author of four highly imaginative novels, twelve short stories, twenty short poems, and the six-book epic poem Toishan.

He has over forty years advertising, marketing and copy writing experience, most notably responsible for helping to launch the Panasonic brand to consumers in North America.

A former US Marine, a graduate of Duke University, a former Executive Vice President with the Grey Advertising Agency in Manhattan, New York, John is curently a retired resident of the Albemarle Plantation in Hertford, North Carolina, where he enjoys writing, fitness training and golf with his wife of forty-four years, Ann M. Cashwell. 

                      Prologue

O’Ryan Gnarr Roberts:

One tough man

One not to mess with

When he took a stand¾

A message flowing so forcefully

From his fierce blue eyes¾

Was big-boned, long-limbed

With thick yellow hair

Surrounding his head that way

In spite of his Viking crudeness

Making him look wise

And proffering a wonderful tale:

His hands so wide and powerful

Able to hold a sledge

And drive a spike

With either equally well

Sending more than one man

With a single blow

Straight to Hell.