Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Plains Drifter (Damnation Books LLC, 2010)

Review by Mari Lynne Rupp
Author: Edward M.Erediac

This is one of the most unusual books I have read in a very long time.
by the definition in the glossary at the back of the book, a Merkabah Rider is a Jewish mystic Who can leave his body and explore the upper and lower worlds of heaven and hell through various Solomnic and hebrew magical texts. This story is told by way of four short stories that could stand on their own, but weave together a picture of a lonely soul travelling about 1879 western America, searching for his old teacher, coming across sinister plots and innocents in need of his help along the way. The first story "Blood libel" was hard to get through. It was well written, but Mr. Erediac uses the language and vernacular of the age. The language is very raw, and unforgiving, but the story in this first 'chapter' does not suffer for it, and adds to the rough flavour and feeling that you really are back in this part of American history.
I found the following chapters much easier to get through. Once you finish the first chapter, and finish the second, you're impossibly hooked until the last story, involving demons, demon women, and an old legend about Adam's first wife.
This book was well-written, well-researched and includes a glossary of jewish and mystic terms and words in the back to help it along, and makes it a well-worth and interesting read. 7/10