The Chumash are the Native Americans who historically lived in the area ranging from about Malibu in the south all the way to about Morro Bay, north of San Luis Obispo, in the north, including the areas now occupied by such cities as Santa Barbara, Oxnard, San Luis Obispo, Lompoc, and Camarillo. As an archaeologist who works in Southern California who also likes 1980s horror novels, I naturally bought this as soon as I discovered its existence (while looking up archaeological material on the Chumash) and then read it at an early opportunity.

Unfortunately the author’s name, Gary Thompson, is common, and it is hard to find out anything about him. However, on newspapers.com, I tracked down one newspaper article promoting the novel which gives some details about the author (Verne Palmer, “The Look of an Author,” San Pedro News-Pilot, February 6, 1987, pg. A12). Gary Thompson was 35, working for Pacific Bell, and living in Lawndale when this book was published, after five years of writing and two years trying to find a publisher without an agent. He was a student at California State University, Long Beach and a seasonal park aide at Leo Carrillo State Beach northwest of Malibu when he first learned about the Chumash. “I used to walk the park grounds thinking about the Chumash and what life must of been like for them,” he explained to the reporter. He read more about the Chumash at UCLA.

This seems to have been the only book Thompson published, although the newspaper article shows he had high hopes. He had already written a murder mystery, Lizzie’s Pride, which seems never to have been published, and had plans for a series of detective books to be written with his wife. He also planned a sequel to Chumash, and hoped the book would be made into a movie. None of that came to fruition.

It’s clear Thompson learned much of what he knew of the Chumash from Thomas C. Blackburn, an anthropologist who compiled Chumash oral narratives, mostly from the unpublished notes of linguist J.P. Harrington, in the 1970s. Thompson acknowledges Blackburn after dedicating the book to his wife. One of the characters is an anthropologist who wrote a dissertation with almost the same name as Blackburn’s. That dissertation became December’s Child: A Book of Chumash Oral Narratives, which clearly inspired Thompson.

Two controversies seem to have inspired the book. One, mentioned in the News-Pilot article, was the planned excavation of a burial site in order to build a flood-control channel near Point Mugu. The other, which is mentioned in passing in the book, was the planned construction of a liquefied natural gas plant at Point Conception, said by some to be the western gate to the land of the dead. The LNG controversy galvanized the Chumash and has been the source of considerable anthropological study (see: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272563739_Anthropology_and_the_Making_o.... The plant was never built.

One of the odd things about the book is that the cover bears the image of a spectral eagle, and the back cover blurb reads, “The Chumash Indians knew ages ago that the Great Eagle Spirit would wreak a terrible revenge on all who dared desecrate their lands.” This is odd, because I don’t remember the Eagle being mentioned at all in the book. If the Eagle was mentioned, it played such a small role that I don’t remember.

The story revolves around the idea that the Chumash, angered at construction in Leo Carrillo and nearby parks, are seeking vengeance. Thompson invents his own Chumash narrative, which he says was related to a miner by a Chumash named Antonio Librado in 1884. Just as Thompson’s anthropologist is obviously based on Blackburn, Antonio Librado is clearly the fictionalized Fernando Librado, who shared Chumash narratives with J.P. Harrington in the early twentieth century. I have not yet read Blackburn’s book, but Thompson’s story doesn’t sound authentic to me. It reminds me more of the Ghost Dance, which first emerged among the Paiute and quickly spread through the Plains tribes.

For me, the central idea also took a little too much suspension of disbelief. It’s hard to imagine the Chumash would allow the construction of cities such as Santa Barbara and then become enraged at the building of a new nature center. I think that’s one of the weakest parts of the plot; what exactly triggered this supernatural outbreak?

But the book has a lot of weaknesses. Characters who would seem to be important appear and then disappear after playing a relatively minor role. They are referred to later in the book, but what they did seems really rather unimportant. One character utters what is apparently an earth-shattering Chumash word -- masopeta -- but Thompson never explains what it means, and after its dramatic utterance it too disappears from the narrative. (I’ve been unable to find out what the word means, but I believe it is a misspelling of masaqsiq?itasup, which is a legendary serpent.) The interactions of the characters are unnatural, and some of the women seem to exist only to give the ranger people to sleep with. The two Chumash descendants who appear do nothing to humanize the Chumash as a people; both are stock characters – the pious elderly woman and the stone-faced Native American — who play minor roles and then disappear. The ancient Chumash of course are barely even portrayed as human beings; they are merely an ancient and malevolent force in the novel.

The way Thompson uses the central character – who naturally is a park ranger, a promotion over Thompson’s former position as park aide – to bring out the cosmic horror falls flat. Thompson himself admits being at a loss as to why the park ranger is so important, which makes it very hard for the reader to think of him as cosmically important. But the ranger’s heroic scene resembles a Chumash narrative more than does the overarching theme of Chumash coming back for spectral revenge.

In short, I found the concept of writing a horror novel based on Chumash oral narratives intriguing, but unfortunately the final product is flawed. It’s probably best to instead read December’s Child, and let the Chumash tell their own tales. ( )