When I heard James Welch tell the story that inspired his latest novel, I knew I wanted to read it. He was signing books in Paris when he was approached by a man in a curious outfit. The man was dressed like a Parisian who wanted to be an American Indian.
Welch discovered that the man's grandmother had been one of the Native Americans in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show around the turn of the last century. She had been hospitalized while the show was in Paris. Too ill to travel, she had been left behind when the show moved on.
Welch began to wonder about how someone, especially a Native American who spoke little English, could adapt and survive in Victorian-era Paris. From those ponderings came this book, The Heartsong of Charging Elk.
Like the grandmother in real life, Charging Elk, a South Dakota Lakota cast member of Buffalo Bill's show, is hospitalized with influenza in France. The show moves on while Charging Elk and another Indian remain in the hospital. When his companion dies, bureaucratic and diplomatic complications trap the Charging Elk in France.
The book is about the next sixteen years in life of a young American in France. But this is not the romantic story of a young artist seeking his muse.
Charging Elk knows a few words of English and the people he lives and works among know none of them. In a world where he cannot ride and hunt or perform, he is an alien in many ways.
Charging Elk spends time wandering on the streets and sitting in a basement jail cell before he is "adopted" by a working class French family who finds him fascinating.
At times the story is slow. There are few really big events. But the man who exists at the end of the book is not the same person who was abandoned by Buffalo Bill and company.
The transitions are slow and natural. That may be the best part of Welch's writing. Jonathan Miles, a contributing editor at Sports Afield, wrote in (on?) Salon.com last August what I jealously wanted to say about the book, "You don't know the enormity of what you've seen until you've seen it all. What James Welch has produced, ultimately, is a novel with an expansiveness of heart and mind, an intimate analogue of Indian estrangement worthy of any readerly voyage."
I really hope you'll take time and read The Heartsong of Charging Elk. It's the most humane novel I've read since I reread For Whom the Bell Tolls.
