Shadow (First Edition)

As a government-backed expedition makes its way west--sent to America's Indian reservations to extol the virtues of U.S. citizenship--photographs of the poor conditions on the reservations, the work of someone in the expedition, make their way into D.C. papers

YA-- In 1913 the Rodman Wannamaker Expedition of Citizenship to the North American Indian traveled to the reservations presenting patriotic ceremonies to encourage Indians to become citizens and to capture posed photographs of them. Using this actual expedition and the historical figures involved, Fergus dramatizes the situation of early 20th-century Native Americans, and readers view the hopeless misunderstandings between the two cultures. No one knows that Fry, a stenographer, is capturing candid photos of the Indians with a hidden camera under his vest and is sending them to the press. The contrasts between appearance and reality will stun readers: the pompous formal ceremonies with posed photographs and the harsh bitter reality of the exploited Indians as captured by Fry's shots. Through his experiences and his camera's lens, YAs will zoom in on an accurate account of American history. The possibility of Fry being caught will snag their interest, but above all they will empathize with a powerless group forced to adapt to change yet struggling not to lose its identity. Fine historical fiction. --Sue Davis, Cedar Falls High School Library, IA
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Deftly written account of a 1913 cross-country expedition to record the surviving members of Indian tribes and offer them citizenship, after which they were conveniently to fade forever into the sunset. In his novel, in which some of the characters are real, Fergus takes for his text the Rodman Wanamaker expedition. Wanamaker, the department store nabob, has conceived of a colossal Indian, dwarfing the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor and housing pictures and mementos of the great tribes pledging allegiance. A collecting expedition leaves via Wanamaker's private railroad car, carrying, among others, Dixon--a shady ecclesiastic who has toadied favor with Wanamaker--and Fry, the ``shadow catcher'' who wears a concealed camera under his clothes. The expedition proceeds from triumph to triumph: in Mescalero, an Apache attempts to knife Fry; in Pueblo, the Indians refuse to sign the Declaration of Allegiance unless they get something better than a piece of paper from it; Kickapoos reply to Dixon's stirring oratory (``...this bold new century! ...this stirring modern age!'') with jeers, finally flinging their cigarettes on the stand, saying, ``Bullshit!'' and departing. Along the way, Buffalo Bill Cody turns up: he's starring in a movie shoot with real Indians. Only problem is, he's so drunk he keeps passing out in the saddle. From the wings of a subplot appears Annie Owns the Fire. In the last 40 pages, Miss Owns the Fire (boy, does she ever) is raped, takes her revenge, falls in love with Fry, splits, then ``tracks'' Fry down and they are promptly united in everlasting bliss. Despite this last contrivance, Fergus compellingly evokes the twilight of the Indian and the Old West, with the tribes' attending train of vultures. Readers who usually skip history as too dry will enjoy this. (Thirty-two historic photographs.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In 1913 an expedition funded by an heir to the Wanamaker fortune and backed by the United States government visited 75 Indian reservations. Its purpose was to foster patriotism among the tribes and to encourage public contributions for the erection of an Indian monument in New York harbor. First novelist Fergus uses this actual event less to tell a story than to examine that crucial moment in American self-consciousness when the nation was looking both backward to a romanticized Winning of the West and forward to its emergence as a world power. He also explores the relationship between the phony facade of the deliberately posed, whether in photography or in the interpreting of events, and the unfeigned revelations of the candid moment. While not always compelling as a novel, this is a scathing indictment of the wrongs inflicted on Native Americans and of the lies white Americans have fabricated about them. See also Fergus's A Rough-Shooting Dog: Reflections from Thick and Uncivil Sorts of Places , reviewed in this issue, p. 106.--Ed.
-Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.