"Powerful...An engaging, pointed, heartfelt examination of culture clash and the debilitating effects of otherness." San Francisco Examiner
Praised by writers including Sherman Alexie, Leslie Marmon Silko, Annie Dillard and Kent Haruf, The Heartsong of Charging Elk will stand alongside James Welch's award-winning Fools Crow as a classic of Native American Literature.
Richly imagined from historical facts, this is a novel of culteral crossing, as Charging Elk, an Oglala Sioux, joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, journeying from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the back streets of ninetheenth-century France. Left bewhind in Marseille while the show travels on, Charging Elk is forced to remake his life alone in a strange land. He adapts as well as he can, holding on to the memories and traditions of life on the Plains and eventually falling in love. But none of the worlds the Indian has known can prepare him for the betrayal that follows. At once epic and intimate, the Heartsong of Charging Elk is a triumph of storytelling and the historical imagination that echoes across time, geography and cultures.
Praised by writers including Sherman Alexie, Leslie Marmon Silko, Annie Dillard and Kent Haruf, The Heartsong of Charging Elk will stand alongside James Welch's award-winning Fools Crow as a classic of Native American Literature.
Richly imagined from historical facts, this is a novel of culteral crossing, as Charging Elk, an Oglala Sioux, joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, journeying from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the back streets of ninetheenth-century France. Left bewhind in Marseille while the show travels on, Charging Elk is forced to remake his life alone in a strange land. He adapts as well as he can, holding on to the memories and traditions of life on the Plains and eventually falling in love. But none of the worlds the Indian has known can prepare him for the betrayal that follows. At once epic and intimate, the Heartsong of Charging Elk is a triumph of storytelling and the historical imagination that echoes across time, geography and cultures.
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