The Heartsong of Charging Elk: A Novel
by By Welch, James
Category: Fiction , Historical , General

From the award-winning author of the Native American classic Fools Crow, James Welch gives us a richly   crafted novel of cultural crossing that is a triumph of storytelling and the historical   imagination.  Charging Elk, an Oglala Sioux, joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show   and journeys from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the back streets of nineteenth-century   Marseille. Left behind in a Marseille hospital after a serious injury while the show   travels on, he is forced to remake his life alone in a strange land. He struggles   to adapt as well as he can, while 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. This is a story of the American   Indian that we have seldom seen: a stranger in a strange land, often an invisible   man, loving, violent, trusting, wary, protective, and defenseless against a society   that excludes him but judges him by its rules. At once epic and intimate, The Heartsong   of Charging Elk echoes across time, geography, and cultures.