This was the very poignant story of Charging Elk, an Oglala Sioux, who wakes up in a hospital in Marseilles, France, in 1889 after sustaining an injury while performing in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. He has been deserted by the show and cannot speak French nor English. The proverbial stranger in a strange land. After he regains some of his stamina, he walks out of the hospital and is shortly thereafter arrested for vagrancy. The American consulate tries to help him but the French police are adamant that he has committed a crime by leaving the hospital and will not release him. He eventually is put in care of a French family and assists in the family business of fishmonger. Although he comes to love the family, after a few years he moves out on his own and works shoveling coal for a soap factory. He lives in a somewhat questionable part of the city and gets involved and falls in love with a lady of the night. This leads to a brutal betrayal and Charging Elk winds up in prison for many years.
The novel tells in flashbacks and memories of Charging Elk's youth. He was present at the Battle of Little Big Horn and he knew Crazy Horse. He longs to return to the Dakotas and his prior life but he is unable to afford passage back to America. It pretty much seemed that anything that could go wrong for him did go wrong. But amongst all the anguish there is also joy and love. This was really an engrossing read which I would recommend highly.
Based on a true story, the novel tells of a young Lakota man, travelling with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Europe, who is separated from the show by illness and a bureaucratic tangle. He remains in France, and holds on to his own innocent core. The novel flags when the focus moves away from Charging Elk, but is richly plotted and moving nontheless.
