Zesch, Scott

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ZESCH, Scott

PERSONAL: Born in TX. Education: Graduate of Texas A&M and Harvard Law School.

ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY; near Art, TX. Agent—c/o Author Mail, St. Martin's Press, 175 5th Ave., New York, NY 10010.

CAREER: Served in Peace Corps as a teacher in Kenya; former election supervisor in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia; former editor in New York, NY; freelance writer, 1993–.

AWARDS, HONORS: Ray Allen Billington Award for best journal article on Western history, for "The Two Captivities of Adolph Korn."

WRITINGS:

Alamo Heights (novel), Texas Christian University Press (Fort Worth, TX), 1999.

The Captured: A True Story of Indian Abduction on the Texas Frontier, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to periodicals, including Southwestern Historical Quarterly and Journal of the West.

SIDELIGHTS: Scott Zesch is a sixth-generation Texan who divides his time between his home state and New York. His Alamo Heights is a fictional account of the second fight to save the Alamo. While the siege of the Alamo took place in 1836, in 1903 the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT) began another campaign against an eastern company that wanted to demolish the historic mission, which was then being used as a warehouse. Clara Driscoll and Adina de Zavala—fictionalized as Alva Carson Keane and Rose de Leon Herrera in the novel—were both members of the DRT, but were divided by their reasons for preserving the building. At one point, de Zavala, who was president of the San Antonio DRT, barricaded herself inside to prevent the building's destruction.

In the novel, Rose wants to protect the Alamo because it is a symbol of her heritage; her father died in a barroom brawl after losing the land the Alamo stands on to Alva's father. Alva wants to save it in order to put a park and monument to her cattle-baron father on the property. Now Rose's husband Antonio, a lawyer, worries that her actions will damage his social standing. Their son, Enrique, is a quiet and scholarly student who plays guitar and idolizes revolutionary mariachi singer Rafael. Other characters include Madame Guenther, a German sculptor who uses nude male models, and Wilton Peck, a lawyer who represents the Eastern interests seeking the Alamo property. The conflict between the two women parallels the conflict then ongoing between the Anglo and Hispanic cultures of Texas. A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that while the novel "lacks the depth of its historical inspiration," its plot "is tightly woven, revealing a world of female socialites that brims with intrigue and politics."

Zesch's The Captured: A True Story of Indian Abduction on the Texas Frontier was inspired by the history of an ancestor, Adolph Korn, the son of German immigrants. On January 1, 1870, ten-year-old Korn was captured by Apaches who traded him to the Comanche tribe he lived with until November of 1872. Korn was taken from the family homestead in Mason, Texas, in the Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio, and when he was traded for captives being held by the U.S. Army and returned to his family, he was unable to readapt. He ate raw meat, lived in a cave, and died alone in 1900. While the blond preteen was with the tribe, he had become a warrior, even participating in Indian raids. Texas Monthly contributor Mike Shea warned that "the brutal truths of frontier life recounted here are not for the faint of heart."

Zesch began to investigate Korn's history after finding his grave in a Mason cemetery. He had heard the family stories, but when he began to write his book, he had little to go on, and so he decided to investigate similar abductions of children that had occurred at about the same time. Zesch's journey took him from Texas to Oklahoma, the modern-day home of the Comanches, as he sought out the descendants of these children in order to piece together his story. Booklist reviewer Deborah Donovan called The Captured "a fascinating, meticulously documented chronicle of the often-painful confrontations between whites and Indians," and a Kirkus Reviews critic deemed it "a carefully written, well-researched contribution to Western history."