Tag: Historical Fiction

At a peace conference in 1854, a Cheyenne chief asked authorities in the U.S. Army for a gift of one thousand women, to be brides for the warriors of his tribe. Because the Cheyenne have a matrilineal society wherein children belong to their mother\’s tribe, the chief saw this as a perfect means to merge his people into the encroaching white man\’s society. In real life, it never happened. The Cheyenne\’s proposal met with outrage and the peace conference fell apart. But what if it did go through? In an alternative history, this novel thoroughly explores that idea. (I paraphrase here one of the opening paragraphs in the book\’s introduction).

May Dodd is from a family of high society, so her liaison with a man of lower social status is deemed highly inappropriate. When she defies her family by living with the man she loves and having his children out of wedlock, she is forcibly consigned to an insane asylum. It is misery there- but to her surprise one day she is given a chance at freedom: to volunteer in the \”social experiment\” of becoming a wife in the Cheyenne tribe. All the women sent to the plains to join the tribe must go of their own accord and finding a serious lack of volunteers, the government acquires recruits from insane asylums, prisons and \’houses of disrepute\’. Thus the company May keeps on the train West is full of interesting, colorful characters from all walks of life. Her story unfolds alongside that of a dozen other women she keeps in close contact with. It is similar in many ways to the story of another recent book I read- gradual learning of a new culture, seeing the world from the natives\’ point of view, running up inevitably against the white men forcing them off the land (in this case, the tribes had been granted \’forever\’ the land of the Black Hills- until gold was found there and the whites wanted it back).

I prefer perhaps, a more personal narrative that focuses on one person- this one although written in style like a series of journal entries and letters (unsent), tells the story of well a dozen women which makes it feel less intimate. It is really interesting to see how the various characters struggled to adjust to their new life- some of them who really were intent on converting the Cheyenne people to christianity or teaching them to be more like the europeans, failed bitterly and were dissatisfied with their situation. Others like May Dodd who came with a more open mind and were willing to learn from their new companions became content with their new lives.

May finds that the tribal people are more kind and forgiving in some ways than the whites who despise them, but in other ways they act very cruel- especially to enemy tribes. Given the reason why the women went to live there, there is an awful lot of preoccupation with sex- I swear almost every chapter it was discussed in one way or another. But the voice of the main character, telling everything in her journal, sounds very true to its time, so she describes everything with a certain amount of discretion. It never gets terribly distasteful. Just tiresome. There was plenty of material about the toil of everyday life, new skills they had to learn, efforts to find game, friction with enemy tribes and white soldiers, etc. But you can never really forget what the main subject matter is, she brings it up all the time…. Overall, a very interesting story.

by Benjamin Capps

When she is only nine years old, the small homestead where Helen lives with her family on the edge of the frontier is attacked by a Comanche band. Helen and her little sister are taken captives. At first they fear for their lives, but are sold by their captors as slaves into different families within the band. Helen wants to escape but soon realizes how hopeless this is as they travel farther away from white settlements. She steels herself to make the best of her situation, to appear compliant so she can gain the trust of the Comanches and take an opportunity in the future. Helen gradually learns the language and customs of the band. She comes to be treated more as a family member than a slave. She watches her sister grow up among the native children- too young to remember her origins. As the years pass, opportunities present themselves for her escape, but Helen hesitates each time- wanting to bring her sister, waiting for a better moment- until at last she finds she is completely assimilated into the tribe, no longer sure she even wants to escape.

I was surprised at how much I liked this story, even though the writing is rather straightforward and the timeline passes quickly. At first I thought it might be considered a YA or even J Fiction book, but it turns out there are a few brutal scenes that were difficult to read. Helen finds that the Comanches are not \’dumb savages\’ as her father\’s folk used to say- but neither are they all kindness. They have their own prejudices against other tribes and torture captives. Larger events pass by and Helen hears rumors of warfare among the whites- later they notice the wildlife is diminishing in certain areas and acting strangely in others. They hear even worse rumors of other tribes being forced to leave their land by \”treaties\” made with the whites. Helen never dreams that these rumors will affect the life she has come to know.

Mostly it is a story of everyday life among ordinary people. The family relationships, the daily work for food and shelter, their travels to different parts of the territory at various times of year, their interactions with other tribes. The games that children play, the stories they tell. One of the more interesting characters I thought was the medicine man- who apparently wasn’t a very good medicine man at all- how his standing among the tribe began to slip and how that affected his son who was coming of age. Also a shift in leadership. And Helen’s own act of bravery when she saw all their work for winter food being despoiled by a warrior from a rival tribe . . .

A very good story, one that has me looking for other books by the same author.

Rating: 3/5      247 pages, 1966

by William Golding

A small band of neanderthals comes in contact with a larger group of primitive humans, more sophisticated in their use of materials and language. For the neanderthal family, the encounter is inevitably fatal. The story is mostly told from their perspective (except for the final chapter, which is from the human viewpoint) and one of the more powerful aspects of the novel was seeing how each group viewed each other. A lot of things the humans do, their very appearance and method of locomotion is completely foreign to the neanderthals and often incomprehensible. So it\’s difficult for the reader to grasp what is happening at well. In fact there were a lot of scenes I never really knew what was going on. It\’s one of the times I\’m actually glad I stopped and read a few reviews and synopses online, because if I hadn\’t I might not have figured out some of the events and actually given up on this book. The dense, image-heavy prose is also one of its strengths. You get a very real idea of what it might be like to live in the moment, and with heightened senses- the motion of leaves in a breeze, of sunlight over a rock, the feeling of moisture in the air, the ability to recognize and track things by scent- intense and close to the earth. The neanderthals are portrayed as being peaceful foragers with strong family ties whereas the humans they encounter who keep slaves, invoke spirits and use fermented drinks- appear to be cruel. They are afraid of the neanderthals, steal their children (for the relief of a woman who lost her own child and their amusement, it turns out) and act quite brutally. At least, that\’s as much as I could grasp. It\’s really a book that merits a second read.

Rating: 3/5         233 pages, 1955

more opinions:
the Asylum

by William March

I didn\’t expect to really like this book, but it grew on me. It\’s about WWI, a company of men marching through France, little stories from each of them. Some only a couple of paragraphs long, others several pages. Often two paired together showing the same incident from their different viewpoints. The voices are not very distinct, but the individual responses to the horrors and senselessness of war are. Men befriending enemies and killing friends, injuring themselves on purpose to get out of fighting, searching for solace with women along the way, misunderstanding the locals in the countryside, insurgency and bravery and cowardice, pain and suffering and bewilderment. It\’s gruesome in many parts, in a straightforward, matter-of-fact way. Roughly chronological, although there really is no storyline to follow, just pieces here and there of each man\’s experience. Eagerness at the beginning when the men are first enlisted and training, the long slog, the growing horrors, the numbness and fear and everything else, what it was like for many of them to come home. Lauded when they didn\’t deserve or want it, others ignored when they had gone through the worst, the difficulties in making their lives again. Reminded me some of Strange Meeting by Susan Hill.

Rating: 3/5      183 pages, 1933