The Wild Girl

Newly orphaned 17-year-old Ned Giles leaves Chicago to join the 1932 Great Apache Expedition, a search for a young boy who was kidnapped by Apaches. Narrator Chris Baskous creates a disparate cast of characters with a myriad of accents. This historical novel guides readers through a dark period in American history, replete with heartbreaking prejudice and breath-snatching violence. Listeners who sign on for the journey across the desert Southwest will find themselves swept up in the challenges faced by these unforgettable characters. This is one of those instances when the audiobook version is more affecting than listening to the voices in your head, so vivid are the characterizations. R.O. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

Starred review from March 28, 2005
Depicting the dusty Depression-era West this grandly, cinematically imagined sweat- and bloodstained saga, inspired by events that took place in Arizona and south of the border in the Sierra Madre badlands, dramatizes latter-day conflicts between whites and Native Americans. During the fall of 1999, an obscure, financially struggling photographer, Ned Giles—now in his early 80s—sells, for $30,000, La Niña Bronca
, his only copy of a photo of a young Apache girl lying on the rude floor of a Mexican jail cell; the buyer's curiosity about the picture's provenance sparks Ned's memories. The rest of the book, set in 1932, reveals a legacy of heroism and lost love through Ned's scrupulously detailed diaries, which vividly recount a nightmare of harrowing misadventures beginning the day he signs on to be a part of the Great Apache Expedition, one of dozens of men hoping to free the son of a wealthy Mexican rancher kidnapped by the Apaches. (The wild Apache girl will be used as ransom.) The narrative unfolds as a series of flashbacks, intermingling short passages from the third-person POV of the fierce Apache girl and first-person excerpts from the diaries of the 17-year-old Chicagoan photographer on his first big assignment. Fergus (One Thousand White Women
) makes unforgettable characters move against vivid landscapes in this laudable encore. Agent, Al Zuckerman at Writers House
. 5-city author tour
.

January 1, 2005
Ned Giles hops onto the 1932 Great Apache Expedition and finds love and hard decisions in the wilds of the West. Apparently based on historical fact; from the author of One Thousand White Women. Simultaneous Hyperion hardcover.

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