The Long Journey Home

The Long Journey Home by Don Coldsmith

John Buffalo, a Lakota Sioux, is taken from his family and his home as a young boy and forced into the hostile world of the white man.  His is first sent to a school for Indian boys where he learns the customs and ways of whites.  It is at this school where it is soon discovered that John has an extraordinary talent in sports.  He is then sponsored by a famous Senator to go to a college in Pennsylvania to study and participate in sports there, particulary football and track and field, to possibly be in the Olympics.  He then falls in love with the Senators white daughter and upon discovery of the love affair, the Senator sends him back West to a lesser school and the daughter is sent to Europe to dissaude the couple.  After the two are broken apart, he is heartbroken and throws himself into his studies and sports, as well as his love of horses.  John decides to pursue a career of coaching but because of the prejudice of the times, is unable to find a job in that field.  He then goes to work for a German farmer breaking horses and has a real talent in that and is soon asked to go to work for The Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Circus as a horse trainer.  It is during this time that he meets a young cowgirl whom he instantly falls in love with, but knowing that the union of the two would be frowned upon, they must hide their love and never marry.  While touring with 101 Show, an old coach from the University hunts him down and asks him to go to the Olympics in Stockholm in 1912 as an assistant coach.  He would be working with the famous Jim Thorpe.  After his stint at the Olympics, John decides to go back to the 101 to see his girl, only to find her gone.  Heartbroken again, John continues his work with the Wild West Show as a cowboy or an Indian, or a horse trainer, whatever is needed.  Eventually the 101 gang is broken up and John moves on to work at various ranches and playing poker in small town saloons.  This is when World War I breaks out, and John joins the cavalry as an Indian Volunteer.  At the end of the war, John discovers that his cowgirl love has died and has had a son by him, who also died in New Mexico of tuberculosis.  Finally, John can take no more of the white mans ways and "bad medicine" and travels West to the Indian Reservation where he was originally from. 

You'll have to read the book tofind out what happens in the end, but I absolutely loved it and I really learned a lot.  The book was published by Tom Doherty Associates in New York in the year of 2001.  Check it out!

The Dress Lodger

The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman

The setting is 19th Century Sunderland England.  A young girl is destitute and without a decent family.  By day, a potter's assistant, hauling mud and clay to the potters wheel.  By night, a dress lodger, or a prositute, owned by a man with a fancy dress.  Watched by an old woman, "The Eye",  who dresses her nightly in the "blue dress", and follows her around the foggy streets to be sure she is earning her rent.  At home in a filthy lodge, her only relative, her tiny bastard baby who was born with his heart on the outside of his body, is being tended to by a small girl who can barely take care of herself.  On one of her nightly rounds, she meets Dr. Henry Chiver, who steels bodies from the streets to perform and teach his students of the human anatomy.  Once the Doctor learns of her deformed child, he decides that his days of body thieving are over, obsessed by the wonders of this child with the blue heart.  He must have it, he must study it, and decides to take the child from her.  But before he gets the child in his clutches, the baby dies of the cholera morbus.  A deadly disease that has been ravaging the continents and killing mostly the poor.  He steals the body of the child from the graveyard, takes the childs heart, and buries the rest of the body in his backyard.  The dress lodger knows because she has been to the graveyard daily to mourn her child.  Immediately upon discovering the missing body, she goes to the doctors study to accuse him and retrieve her child.  But the townspeople have figured him out also.  They know that he has taken their loved ones bodies also.  They come in a mob to exact revenge.  Bodies of people, old and young alike are retrieved from the doctors soil.  This is a time when people would not let their bodies be studied.  Doctors had no other way to discover cures and learn of the diseases.  They had to resort to murder and thievery.  "Grave: A place where the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student."-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

I found this book intriguing in a Dickenson sort of way.  We learn of the culture of the people of England during a time of death, we learn of medical history and we see how we have come a long way in studying disease and finding cures, and we learn of those who were sacrificed so thatmedicine might advance.  This book was published by the Atlantic Monthly Press in New York and was copyrighted in 2000.

Also, I find it interesting that the story seems to be told by the ghost of a lodger who lives in the same house as the dress lodger and has died from the cholera. 

 

The Complete Peanuts-Charles Schulz

I found this little fat book in the new section of my local library.  It is the complete book of Peanuts comic strips from 1950 to 1952.  I read every square.  This is the evolution of all the Peanuts characters and shows when and how each came into the picture.  Of course, Woodstock, didn't come in til the 1960s, but we do see Charlie Brown, Lucy, Violet, Peppermint Patty, Shermie, Linus, and Schroeder with his little piano.  These were the original characters.  We see Snoopy begin to "think" and the characters mutiply. The captions in the strips heavily reflect life in the 1950s and there is an interview with Charles Shulz that I found very interesting.  Did you know that "Sparky" Schulz originally sold his strip to the St. Paul Pioneer Press for $10 a day and when he asked for a raise, they refused and he quit and took it to New York where it became an immediate success?  Check it out!

Their Eyes Were Watching God

I'm so excited!  One of my favorite books is being made into a movie.  Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.  It will star Halle Berry.  Watch for it and check out my book review here ---> Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Boone's Lick by Larry McMurtry

Boone's Lick is a backwater town in Missouri . The setting is the American West during the Civil War.  Mary Margaret Cecil and her growing family are living off the land the best they can.  Her husband Dickie is a supplier for the forts of the US Army and travels far and wide securing himself with an Indian wife and family at every fort on the Oregon Trail.  Mary Margaret has had enough of his never-do-well ways and decides to pack up her family and her beloved brother-in-law, Uncle Seth, in a wagon and travel up the Missouri River to find her husband Dickie and put an end to his galavanting ways.  Along the way they procure an old Indian who guides them and a French traveling minister who sort of helps guide them.  They lose old Grandpa Crackenthorpe in a storm, they meet several bands of Indians, including Pawnee, Comanche, Sioux, and the terrifying Blackfoot, as well as three Indian families of Dickie's.  When they finally reach Wyoming and find "Pa", Mary Margaret delivers him his walking papers. 

Among the characters are the shy but ambitious son Shay, his temperous brother G.T., their fearless little sister Neva, baby Marcy, Mary Margaret or "Ma", crazy and delusional Grandpa Crackenthorpe, the family caretaker Uncle Seth, Ma's whore sister Aunt Rosie, Wild Bill Hickok, Sheriff Baldy Stone, the all-knowing Indian Charlie Seven Days, father Pere Villy, and the infamous Dick Cecil himself. 

This book is so humorous, I found myself giggling at every turn of a page.  The frontier life and Civil War era is luring to me and I enjoyed it very much.  Larry McMurtry is at his very best and cannot be outwritten when it comes to westerns.  The book was published in 2000 by Simon & Schuster Inc.  Go get it right away, you won't be sorry!

The Way of the Coyote by Elmer Kelton

It is the end of the Civil War, in the 1860s.  Rusty Shannon is a former Texas Ranger who rescues a small boy from his captives, the Comanche Indians.  The two journey to Rusty's Texas home where he is confronted by two outlaws who hold an old grudge against him.  One of his friends, a black man named Shanty, is burned out of his home by the Klu Klux Klan.  The state police and the judges, as well as most politicians are carpetbaggers, robbing normal folks of the their farms and possessions.  Comanches are raiding homes for scalps, horses, killing women and taking small children to raise as slaves or warriors.  This is the story of two men and their struggles to remain free among hard ruffians. 

I enjoy Westerns very much and Elmer Kelton is a master.  He is a six-time winner of the Spur Award, has earned four Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, and was named the greatest Western author of all time by the Western Writers of America.  He has written more than forty books.

The Way of the Coyote was published in 2001 by Tom Doherty Associates. 

Note:  I didn't realize it at the time I checked this book out but it is the third book of a series, although it was still well read out of order.  The first book is called The Buckskin Line and the second is called Badger Boy.  I'm currently reading these and will review soon, so check back often.

If Only It Were True by Marc Levy

Lauren Kline is  a physician who, during her weekend vacation, gets into a car accident and goes into a deep coma.  Somehow, she has figured out how to astrally travel outside of her body, by power of thought.  She thinks where she wants to be and she puts herself there.  No one can see her or hear her while she's out of her body.  She decides to go back to her old apartment and discovers a man, Arthur, an architect, who has moved in.  She watches him for a while and soon Arthur is able to see her and feel her.  At first he doesn't believe her but when she convinces him to go to the hospital to see her body, he believes.  His friends think he's crazy, talking to himself, even acting like he's with someone who's not there.  The two soon become inseperable. 

Meanwhile, back at the hospital, the staff convinces Lauren's mother to remove the feeding tube that is keeping her alive.  When Lauren confides in Arthur that this is about to happen, he decides to kidnap her body in order to keep her "ghost" alive.  An investigator with the San Francisco Police soon tracks him down, recovers the body, but strangley, the policeman believes Arthur's story and agrees not to turn him in.  The body is returned to the hospital and the next day Lauren's ghost begins to fade.  They realize that the feeding tube has been removed and soon the ghost is gone and Arthur is left to mourn the death of his new best friend.  He grieves for a couple of weeks, staying in the house and not answering the telephone.  Little does he know, Lauren is still alive and breathing, even coming out of the coma back at the hospital. 

Now, I usually don't go in for romance novels, but this one struck a chord with me because of the supernatural flair which drew me in right away.  I'm glad I read this book. It is a page turner from chapter 1, a rich heartwarming story that I won't soon forget.  The book was copyrighted in 2000 and was an instant success.  Foreign rights have been sold in twenty-eight countries.