Shadow Catcher by Charles Fergus

Abstract

Reviews 253 her own parents are resolved, and her efforts to begin a writing career become more disciplined and productive. Logue’s story is also a contemporary one in other ways. Her central charac­ ters are Gabrielle and Jerry, who have grown up in the sixties and are now (inl982-83) struggling with the issues of early middle age. They leave behind the financial security and the rat race of California life to begin anew as entrepreneurs in the northern Idaho woods: a computer business in the base­ ment, writing table in the bedroom, yoga class in the living room. Descriptions of nature are minimal, but there’s a strong sense of the felt presence of nature and the seasons, a growing personal identification with life process that is liberating and nourishing. The novel will appeal most to baby-boomer women. Some readers may find the structure unconvincing: the apparent realism of an epistolary novel in an era when the writing of long letters is not realistic, and the effect of too intense self-examination and self-involvement when there are comparatively few refer­ ences in the letters to the issues in the lives of the recipients. Nonetheless, the author has succeeded in giving us some sense of the distinctive personalities and lives of the three recipients of these letters, and the narrator’s self-story is convincingly presented. BARBARA HOWARD MELDRUM University ofIdaho Shadow Catcher. By Charles Fergus. (New York: Soho Press Inc., 1991. 308 pages, $19.95.) Mixing history and fiction for political or didactic purposes is always a tricky business. Once again, this proves so in Charles Fergus’ socially-concerned first novel. Shadow Catcher is the story of Indian agent James McLaughlin—the man who gotSitting Bull. The time is 1913, eve of the First World War. Mastermind of Custer’s defeat, Sitting Bull has been dead for 23 years. McLaughlin, now an old man, cannot forget his role in Bull’s death and that, in turn, is the gist of the tale. While on a train tour of the American West, the much-renowned McLaughlin dictates his autobiography to a young Bureau of Indian Affairs stenographer. Major McLaughlin, a straightforward, honest man, has devoted his life to preparing the native American for coming to terms with white America. As the Rodman Wanamaker Expedition of Citizenship to the North American Indian makes repeated flag-waving stops at impoverished Indian reservations, McLaughlin’s mood darkens, and he dwells more and more on the final days of Sitting Bull. 254 Western American Literature The ultimate destination of the Wanamaker Expedition is the Dakotas’ Standing Rock reservation, where, in 1890, Sioux reservation police killed Sitting Bull in an early morning shoot-out. Dispatched by McLaughlin to arrest Bull for his part in the emerging Ghost Dance troubles, the tribal police lose control of the situation and bloody disaster follows. This reader wanted to like Shadow Catchera great deal more than he finally did. First novelist Fergus has carefully researched his topic, and he writes well. Place description and historical detail are among the novel’s strengths. Unfor­ tunately, depth of characterization is not. Fergus has a great character in McLaughlin, but he fails to allow the old man to come to life. McLaughlin and the other characters, both true-life and fictional, represent political points of view, more so than flesh and blood people. The author’s politics overwhelm his better instincts as a storyteller. Consumed by the idea that native Americans received a raw deal from white America, Fergus, for the most part, fails to take Shadow Catcher beyond that brutal fact. If he had, he could conceivably have created both the social state­ ment that he has, as well as a literary work of lasting power. JAMES B. HEMESATH Adams State College Sudden Country. By Loren D. Estleman. (New York: Doubleday, 1991. 182 pages, $15.00.) Sudden Country is the most recent effort by the prolific Loren D. Estleman, whose other Westerns (or “frontier novels” as they are called on the dust jacket—shades of Louis L’Amour) include Aces andEightsand Bloody Season. The narrator of the novel is a thirteen-year-old boy (must they always be...