The Buffalo Soldier [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio Cassette]

Chris Bohjalian (Author), Alison Fraser (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 5, 2002

Read by Allison Frasier
11 cassettes, 16 hours

In the tradition of his #1 New York Times bestselling novel Midwives, Chris Bohjalian returns with a story of love put to the test by a devastating loss and the redemption that can come from the most unexpected places.

Terry and Laura Sheldon experience an especially tragic version of every parent's nightmare. They lose not one but both of their children, nine-year-old twin girls, when a flash flood thunders through their small Vermont town. Shattered, the two spend a year trying to regain some measure of emotional equilibrium. Physically unable to have more children of their own, they finally decide to take in a foster child, Alfred, a ten-year-old African American boy.

Like life, THE BUFFALO SOLDIER then develops in divergent ways. Terry has a a brief affair with a young woman who becomes pregnant with his child - a child that Terry suddenly realizes he wants desperately. And Alfred, another soul hungry for love, is transformed through a neighbor's friendship and his tales of the Buffalo soldiers, African Americans who served in the cavalry of the American West.

THE BUFFALO SOLDIER is the best kind of Chris Bohjalian novel, a story of a small town and its fundamentally good people trying to overcome the trials of fate and circumstance.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There are certain plots that possess inherent drama, and the saving of a lost child is one of them. In The Buffalo Soldier, Chris Bohjalian--who showed such flair for drama in the bestselling Oprah's Book Club® pick Midwives--gives us the story of 10-year-old Alfred, an African American foster child who is taken in by Terry and Laura Sheldon, a white couple whose twin daughters have drowned. Another child is also about to come on the scene: Terry has an affair, and the young woman becomes pregnant. Bohjalian takes his sweet time exploring these relationships, but he also writes scenes with the same tautness that made Midwives a page-turner. The result is a novel that's both readable and exhaustively fleshed out. As Alfred settles into the Sheldons' lives, we actually come to believe in the unlikely little family the three of them forge. Bohjalian narrates his story from the perspective of each of his principal characters, a method that can be tiresome, but here is made fresh by the author's clear vision: these people, you feel, are real to him. --Claire Dederer --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The capricious ways of nature frame this eighth novel by the popular Bohjalian (Midwives; Trans-Sister Radio). Several years after the devastating loss of their nine-year-old twin daughters in a flood, Vermont residents Laura and Terry Sheldon decide to adopt a child. When a state agency grants them a taciturn 10-year-old African-American boy on a foster-parent trial basis, they acquiesce, albeit with some reluctance. The trial is no less unsettling for the child, Alfred, who has already endured separations and is aware of his solitary status in the small, white town. What will save the boy, and lend poignancy to the novel, is a growing friendship with an elderly neighbor, Paul, a retired teacher, who accepts him without preconditions. He gives the boy a book about a post-Civil War western black cavalry unit, the Buffalo Soldiers, and a cap with a picture of their buffalo symbol and then invites the boy to learn to ride his horse. Alfred, moved by the book, responds to Paul and begins to break out of his isolation. Bohjalian writes honestly and often movingly, but his characters do not escape stereotyping. Terry, a uniformed state trooper, is all tough policeman when he catches Alfred arranging a hidden stash of food. He angrily accuses him of thievery, insensitive to Alfred's fear that he may be rejected and need to escape. Laura, an unhappy, colorless character, is only lent dignity by her growing love for the boy and a willingness to understand him. In an echo of the book's opening scene, another natural disaster brings the novel to a handy but credibility-straining conclusion. Bohjalian's facile handling of both plot and narrative makes for fast reading, but fans may conclude that the result feels rushed and cursory. 13-city author tour.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Random House Audio; Unabridged edition (March 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553715003
• ISBN-13: 978-0553715002
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 4.6 x 2.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,776,484 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Chris Bohjalian is the author of fourteen books, including the New York Times bestsellers, The Night Strangers, Secrets of Eden, Skeletons at the Feast, The Double Bind, Before You Know Kindness, The Law of Similars, and Midwives.

His new novel, The Night Strangers, is a ghost story inspired by a door in his basement and Sully Sullenberger's successful ditching of an Airbus in the Hudson River.

Secrets of Eden, his 2010 novel, will air as a Lifetime Television movie on January 28, 2012. It stars John Stamos and Anna Gunn.

Chris won the New England Book Award in 2002, and his novel, Midwives, was a number one New York Times bestseller, a selection of Oprah's Book Club, a Publishers Weekly "Best Book," and a New England Booksellers Association Discovery pick. His work has been translated into over 25 languages and twice before become movies ("Midwives" and "Past the Bleachers"). You can see some of the international covers on this web site.

He has written for a wide variety of magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest, and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and has been a Sunday columnist for Gannett's Burlington Free Press since 1992. Chris graduated from Amherst College, and lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.

You can learn more about him here on the Q and A, as well as on Facebook . And, if you like, follow him on twitter as well.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Depends On What You Like, June 5, 2002

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Buffalo Soldier: A Novel by the Bestselling Author of MIDWIVES (Hardcover)

Chris Bohjalian's, "The Buffalo Soldier", is a well-crafted and at times beautifully written novel. Simplified, the book is about human nature when placed under extreme duress due to tragedy. No parent should ever have to bury one child much less face the horror of two young deaths, and any attempt at recovery is by definition going to be traumatic at best. The author creates a couple that tries to travel back to some form of life that is tolerable if not one that will ever be purely happy again. The way they proceed is extreme in the unusual choices they make, and the ingrained difficulties their choice is burdened with.

The setting is Vermont, a very rural Vermont of dirt roads and mountain streams that can still tear apart lives. This is not Burlington by the lake, a city an hours drive from cosmopolitan Montreal. The decision to take a Foster Child in to their home is hardly an easy choice. Many children from these programs have lead itinerant lives at best, and have experienced views of human behavior that no person should see. So when a grieving couple opens their home to a young African American boy who has been bounced about by the system from his original home in Philadelphia, only to be placed in a very rural and very white environment, there are issues for everyone.

The author deals with so many issues that it is not possible to comment on them all, so I choose one that I enjoyed the most. This young boy has the good fortune to have an elderly couple that helps him to learn about his history and define himself, who offer some stability while his foster parents deal with their own demons that are far from confronted much less solved.

This couple has traveled the nation and has brought home every knick-knack they have seen. These are the people that the makers of cheesy souvenirs live for. But more importantly they know this country's history and with a book and a cap with a buffalo on it they change this young man's life. Buffalo soldier was the name given to African American soldiers by Native Americans. It is a name that was given out of respect for these men, men that history too often slights.

The young man learns of the history that caused these men to be honored, and they become for him the role models that he will emulate. This part of the novel was my favorite element; there were many others but none that struck with such power and grace. And that is why my comments for the title of this review are a bit ambivalent. There was much about the book I found to be slow, and some was a bit cliché. However this relationship made the entire book a worthwhile read.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Homerun for Chris Bohjalian, May 4, 2002

By 

"cymoncompanies" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Buffalo Soldier: A Novel by the Bestselling Author of MIDWIVES (Hardcover)

"The Buffalo Soldier" proved to me that Chris Bohjalian is a wonderful, timeless storyteller. In this book, the author takes what could be harsh storylines of a loss of one's children, marital infidelity, and interracial adoptions and weaves a story that is a delight to read, with only subtle hints of these harsh issues--they become secondary to the real story of people's lives. He has a wonderful sense of the people in his home state of Vermont, and develops their characters so that you feel like you've known them all of your life. This was a wonderful read! I thorougly enjoyed one of his other books, "Midwives," and now can't wait to read his other works!

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Dififcult Book to Review, June 11, 2003

By 

M. Herzik "mhm50" (SLO, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Buffalo Soldier: A Novel (Paperback)

On many levels I enjoyed Bohjalian's The Buffalo Soldier so, why only the 3 stars? I'll begin with what I liked. The historic introduction at the beginning of each chapter. Although, I have a cursory knowledge of Buffalo Soldiers it has made me want to learn more. The development and insight into Alfred's character. Using Alfred as a catalyst to bring about changes in Laura's character, opening her up as it were, was poignant. The secondary characters of the Heberts brought some lightness into a rather dark novel.
But, and now here it comes,I find it difficult to believe that every child in the town would be so callously prejudice. Especially when Alfred is described as handsome, intelligent and athletic. Or that the class teacher is so indifferent to the "new" kid, rather a brutal commentary on the education system in Vermont.
My biggest problems however, were the relationship between Terry and Phoebe,his character, and the ending of the book. First the relationship,this struck me as an everyman's fantasy. A girlfriend/lover that wants nothing from the relationship. Phoebe was just too good to be true, no demands, no expectations and no recriminations. I suppose I am to feel sympathy for Terry because of the death of his daughters. Does this also mean I am to condone infidelity to his wife and indifference to a foster child? If Alfred hadn't saved his life would the distrust/indifference have remained? A rather stringent lesson to prove one's self worth. I found Terry weak, self centered, manipulative and a hypocrite. Never once did Terry or Phoebe consider that eventually the unborn child might want to locate his father and what results that might have on Laura's and Terry's relationship. Infact, the ending was just too pat. Phoebe quietly leaves with no ill will towards Terry, Laura forgives Terry....but wait how can that be as she has no knowledge of the unborn child? Does this suggest a sequel where she will be just as understanding when the "child" comes a knocking on her door 20 years later? How can a relationship exist between Laura and Terry with this rather onimous cloud hanging on the horizon. No, there are too many problems with Terry's character and the author's lack of accountability with it for this to be a satisfying book.