The Way the Dust Clings

“Johnson’s eloquent novel is an unflinching look at the past’s brutality as much as it is a beautiful reminder that we are all of those who’ve come before. The novel is the prayer of an ancestor written with the beauty of a Grecian epic.” —Jacob Mack, author of Envy and the Wind

In the years leading up to the 1830s Indian Removal, a young Indigenous woman named Tayinaka flees with her newborn child—conceived through a brutal assault—across a ravaged Southern landscape. Haunted by loss and hunted by soldiers, she seeks refuge and survival.

Separated from her cousin Innette in the chaos of soldiers’ attacks, Tayinaka must continue alone through a landscape scarred by violence and betrayal. She embarks on a dangerous journey to reach a promised boat to freedom, her newborn child bound to her chest. But along the way, the soldiers are waiting, and she is captured and subjected to the cruelty and racial hatred of the era. In a desperate escape attempt, she leaps from their steamship into the churning river below—plummeting into unexpected and mysterious consequences.

Blending historical fiction with speculative elements, The Way the Dust Clings is a powerful story of survival, cultural erasure, identity, and generational memory. As Tayinaka returns to the last place that brought her peace, she carries the sorrow of what was lost—and the hope that it might be reclaimed.