The Heartsong of Charging Elk: A Novel - Hardcover

Welch, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385496745 ISBN 13: 9780385496742

Publisher: Doubleday, 2000

Synopsis

Inspired by actual historical fact, James Welch's  tells the story of an Oglala Sioux who travels the extraordinary geographical and cultural distance from tribal life in the Black Hills of South Dakota to existence on the streets of Marseille. As a young boy, Charging Elk witnessed his people's massacre of Custer's Seventh Cavalry at Little Big Horn, followed by years of futile fighting and wandering until the Sioux were finally lured to the Pine Ridge reservation. But he prefers life in the Stronghold, living by his wits and skills in the old way.

Ironically, it is Charging Elk's horsemanship and independent air that cause Buffalo Bill to recruit him for his Wild West Show, which travels across "the big water" to create a sensation in the capitals of Europe. Charging Elk and his Sioux companions are living a life touched by fame and marked by previously unthinkable experiences--until he falls ill in Marseille and, through a bureaucratic mix-up, is left behind in a hospital while the show travels on. Scared, disoriented, Charging Elk escapes--only to fall into a series of events, including a love affair with a prostitute and a shocking murder, that will change his life utterly beyond his imagination.

James Welch, one of our truly great Native American writers, has taken a fascinating premise and realized it with utter mastery. Reminiscent of Fools Crow, his classic novel of Indian life, The Heartsong of Charging Elk is a haunting epic of culture shock and colliding ways of life and thought, sure to be hailed by reviewers and readers alike.

About this title

Review:

In the bitter morning of defeat, when the last battle has been lost to the white man, the protagonist of The Heartsong of Charging Elk faces a series of decisions. Should he adapt to reservation life or go wandering, a fugitive in a terrible new world? Should he become docile or violent? These are the questions at the heart of James Welch's novel, which is based on the true story of an Oglala Sioux who was plucked from the reservation to perform in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

The multiple paradoxes of his situation--a Native American acting out pseudo-Native American pageants for European audiences--are alternately comical and cruel, pathetic and poignant. "Of course," muses Charging Elk, "he knew that it was all fake and that some of the elders back home disapproved of the young men going off to participate in the white man's sham, but he no longer felt guilty about singing scalping songs or participating in scalp dances or sneak-up dances." Halfway through the tour, however, he finds himself laid up in Marseilles with broken ribs and a bout of influenza. In his delirium, he worries that the Wild West troupe may have left him behind to die--and since they are the only family he has left, Charging Elk flees the white man's "healing house" in a panic, hoping to catch up with his companions.

It's here that the novel actually begins. Welch has latched onto a fantastically rich premise: a Native American loose in a French city, delirious, hungry, and surrounded by ghosts. Charging Elk's odyssey through Marseilles is intercut with flashbacks, and his memories of the Black Hills--of life before his America was lost--generate the novel's most powerful prose. There are weak spots, too, particularly when the hero engages in some Wild Western violence. Passionate and unsteady, The Heartsong of Charging Elk tends to move in and out of focus. But during its intervals of clarity, it's hard to resist. --Emily White

From the Back Cover:

Advance Praise for The Heartsong of Charging Elk

"Fools Crow is one of the greatest, most absorbing novels of mainstream American literature. It's absurd to stick it on a 'Native American' reservation. Now, in The Heartsong of Charging Elk, the fact-based saga of an Oglala Sioux who joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and ends up in
Marseille, James Welch has once again written a major American novel."
-- Annie Dillard

"James Welch has done it again. The Heartsong of Charging Elk deserves a listing among the classics of American fiction."
-- Tony Hillerman

"This moving portrait of an Oglala Sioux, cut off from the heartland and adrift in the blind bureaucracy of nineteenth-century France, has a slow, brooding power that builds majestically. I was captivated by the story of Charging Elk's peculiar and tragic exile, a brilliant representation of clashing cultures."
-- Andrea Barrett

"This history-shadowed story, which truly reads like a song from the divided heart of the Old World and the New, is a consummate leap of imagination by a sure-handed and wise writer. James Welch, who long has been one of our finest American voices, here reaches the goal of all great
literature: to transform words into worlds."
-- Ivan Doig

"I just finished reading The Heartsong of Charging Elk. I think Jim Welch has written a masterpiece."
-- Leslie Marmon Silko

"Horseback mornings by the Greasy Grass, Custer and Crazy Horse both dead, Buffalo Bill and his Wild West under the great Iron Tree in Paris, a stranded Sioux warrior reinventing his life on the streets of nineteenth-century Marseille--The Heartsong of Charging Elk is vividly imagined and wonderfully readable, a romance, a fable, and a sternly realistic story about salvaging emotional victory. Hats off to James Welch."

-- William Kittredge

"James Welch's Winter in the Blood is one of the masterpieces of American literature. His newest book, The Heartsong of Charging Elk, will take its place beside it--a wonderful, compelling novel about a Native American stranded in Europe, whose story is both a vividly imagined account of the strange events in France as well as a striking metaphor for the tragic journey of the Sioux in South Dakota. Like all of James Welch's books, it is a cause for celebration."
-- Kent Haruf

"There are books you read once and put away. There are books you read once and never forget. And then there are those very special books you keep returning to, reading them once or twice a year for the rest of your life. James Welch's Heartsong is one of those very special books. I have read it three times already and plan to carry it around like a
traveling salesman, like a zealous evangelist, forcing the book into the hands of strangers and friends, preaching, 'Hey, this may not save your life, but it's certainly going to give you a fighting chance.'"
-- Sherman Alexie

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0385496745
• ISBN 13: 9780385496742
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448