Joe Two Trees is the last of his tribe. New York in the early twentieth century is not for him. Or is it? As a native New Yorker with a passion for the past, I loved this beautiful story. Whenever I return home, I can no longer visit the Bronx (especially Pelham Bay) without thinking of Joe and his relationship with Theodore Kazimoroff's father. The writing is lovely, and the story evokes all sorts of feelings at so many levels. It was my Aunt, a former teacher, who told me that I should read this book. It has become one of those novels that I recommend to others regularly.

This is a second-hand tale, which is as it should be, as Joe Two Trees did not want his life-story lost, and he did not want the Algonquin tradition of story-telling lost, either. For those of you who liked "Tatham Mound" by Piers Anthony, you'll like this one. If you like this one, "Tatham Mound" becomes suggested reading.

Theodore Kazimiroff tells us the story that his father told him, which was the story that Joe Two Trees told him. The first few chapters, which tell of how Theodore's father, as a boy, explored the rural areas around New York in 1924, and stumbled across a true treasure. He was looking for Native American artifacts, and found instead a friend and a living repository of Native American history: Joe Two Trees. These early, preliminary chapters are fine, but I would have been disappointed if the entire book followed this course. It didn't.

After the story of the boy meeting the Indian, the book moves on to give us Theodore's recounting of his father's recounting of the recounting of Joe Two Tree's life. From that point on, the reader will find his/her eyes glued to the book. Two Trees was born in 1840 to a small clan of Algonquins in the area of the Hudson River near New York City. By the time he was fifteen, every Indian he knew was dead or vanished. He believed that he was the last Native American left, period. He set off into the White Man's world to avoid the terrible loneliness of his solitude, and gradually becomes Joe Two Trees.

His trek through the frequent ugliness and occasional beauty of the new world being created by the White Man is a quiet adventure that takes the reader along and leaves one feeling that the adventure was actually shared. There is kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, success and triumph, and a gradual process of Joe Two Trees realizing that he was destined to be "The Last Algonquin" and did not belong in the White Man's world. He goes from being "Two Trees" to "Joe Two Trees" and back to "Two Trees", known as Joe by the boy who was the author's father.

What might be most surprising is the quality of writing in this book, which is nearly flawless from a writer who did not write anything else, at least that I could find. Perhaps the purity of his writing was driven by the quality of this remarkable tale. Please keep the tradition alive by reading it, and by passing it on.

This is a must read, especially for those of us raised in the Pelham Bay section of Bronx. The tale of The Last Algonquin is inspiring and heartwarming. And, I hope that Mr. Kazimiroff realizes that he has given The Bronx, the Algonquin Indians and his father the immortality they truly deserve.
Remember as long as someone tells( hears or reads) this tale, the story of Joe Two Trees will continue to live on among the rocks and trees of Pelham Bay Park.