Book Review: Dael and the Painted People

Dael and the Painted People

By:  Allan Richard Shickman

Publisher:  Earthshaker Books

Published Date:  August 2011

Format:  Paperback 155pgs, trade size

Genre:  Fiction

Series:  3rd in Zan-Gah series; Book 1 ~ A Prehistoric Adventure, Book 2 ~ Zan-Gah and The Beautiful Country

Recommendation:  For young readers enjoying prehistoric times, yes.  Can learn how people can change and grow internally.

Book Synopsis:
A prehistoric adventure, this is the third of the Zan-Gah young adult books.  When Dael, guilty and tormented, came to live with the tribe of the painted people, he longed for peace and restoration; but without knowing it, he made a powerful enemy.  Luckily, Dael had friends - including a troop of crows - and his own mystical powers.  The disturbed and violent hero learns from the Children of the Earth, and from his submissive wife, a new way of life that is peaceful and generous.  Dael and the Painted People is a story of conflict, healing, hate, and love by the winner of the Eric Hoffer Award, a finalist for the Fore Ward magazine Book of the Year Award, and the Mom's Choice Gold Seal for Excellence in a family-friendly book series.

First Sentence:
To dream of a head dripping with blood and look into its glazed and lifeless eyes might, even in sleep, leave the dreamer changed and chastened.

My Thoughts and Summary:
Dael, Zan-Gah's twin brother, is tormented by his nightmares and memory of killing the old wasp woman, Hurnoa.  He decides he needs to leave his people.  Leaving his home and family he asks Sparrow, the mute heart broken female, to travel with him.  As Dael travels he starts to feel differently on everything.  Two broken souls traveling together not knowing where to go.  But Dael remembers the connection he felt for the red people as they are as alien to him as he is to his people and wants to live with them.  But where things go smoothly and Dael fits in, there is still trouble around the corner.

We start to see a new side to Dael here.  He is far more than the broken destructive man we thought he was prior to this book.  In Daels journey we visit old places and memories of Daels' from childhood to his living with the cruel people how took him through to the current time back with his family.  Dael starts to reflect on his life and the terrible things he had done to others.  We get a view of Dael from the inside as he heals, and as well from others who view him from a new and his changes. 

Seeing Dael through fresh eyes helps us to see Dael as not being the violent man we remember giving him a fresh start in our minds as with the new people he is living with.  This was a great way to take Dael from what we remember him as and place him in new surroundings to give us, the reader, a chance to feel for Dael.  Even come to like him.

We see the evolution of man and their abilities to learn and do new things in the world.  We learn of different life styles in which different people in different regions lived.  Different surroundings, different believes, different living.  We see the red people now and their way of life, which turns out to be the best thing for Dael, and Sparrow.

I liked seeing Dael with his own book with his growth and learning.  This is his healing period.  We are reminded in the beginning of the friends and family he left, and in the end we hear of them again.  The world these cave people live in is quickly changing, and they are the ones evolving quickly to change it.  I like the take on the evolution of caveman that is viewed in this book.  Nice to see a view of the evolution of the times from the beginning when man had nothing but themselves and the land around them.


I read this book for an honest review from the publisher.

This book qualifies for the YA Reading Challenge of 2011