Charging Elk is a Lakota Indian who joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show to travel throughout Europe enacting his way of life on the South Dakota prairies. Dressed in native regalia, he and others perform mock mock battles with settlers invading his homeland and the soldiers protecting them. Exhibiting extraordinary horsemanship, they hunt young buffalo in the arenas for admiring crowds.
In Marseille, Charging Elk becomes ill and falls from his horse during a performance only to wake up in a hospital as the show leaves him behind. Due to French bureaucratic error he cannot travel back to Dakota or rejoin the show. He speaks little French, doesn't understand the culture and finds himself alienated from all he knows. His life is filled with tragic incidents as he realizes he may be marooned in France for life. It's a fine read that illustrates living hand to mouth, avoiding missteps to elude the police while searching for a way to adapt to a this strange culture. As I read I wondered if he would survive in a country where his skin is much darker than others and he towers above those around him.
In Marseille, Charging Elk becomes ill and falls from his horse during a performance only to wake up in a hospital as the show leaves him behind. Due to French bureaucratic error he cannot travel back to Dakota or rejoin the show. He speaks little French, doesn't understand the culture and finds himself alienated from all he knows. His life is filled with tragic incidents as he realizes he may be marooned in France for life. It's a fine read that illustrates living hand to mouth, avoiding missteps to elude the police while searching for a way to adapt to a this strange culture. As I read I wondered if he would survive in a country where his skin is much darker than others and he towers above those around him.
"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.
