Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea [Hardcover]

Diane Glancy (Author)

Book Description

Series: Lewis & Clark Expedition | Publication Date: February 24, 2003

In Stone Heart, Diane Glancy grippingly retells the story of American legend Sacajawea, the young Shoshoni woman who traveled with Lewis and Clark on their expedition to the West. Presented in Sacajawea’s voice in the form of a diary, the book makes moving and illuminating fiction out of a famed piece of history that has long been masked by myth. Glancy adds breadth and immediacy to the story by juxtaposing excerpts from Lewis and Clark’s diaries with her brilliantly imagined journal of Sacajawea.

Lewis and Clark recorded the external journey; its physical challenges and its wonders. Glancy’s Sacajawea experiences the expedition on a different plane, one in which the dream of a small white stone shaped like a beaver is emblematic of the thin membrane between the worlds of the mundane and the magical. Sacajawea hears the clouds talking, feels the thunderous hooves of ghost horses, and savors the wetness where a buffalo calf licks her arm from the other side.

In Stone Heart, the Lewis and Clark Trail springs back to life in a stunning work of imagination that vividly depicts the day-to-day tasks, ordeals, and triumphs of the famed expedition. At once a trail uncovered and a life revealed, Stone Heart draws a lingering portrait of a woman of resilience and courage.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Glancy (Pushing the Bear) has fashioned an imaginative, second-person "diary" by the legendary Shoshone guide who aided Lewis and Clark on their expedition from Missouri to California. Sacajawea is a pregnant teenager in the late fall of 1804, having been abducted from her Shoshone tribe by the rival Hidatsas and then bought by Frenchman Toussaint Charbonneau. Charbonneau, characterized here as a brutish opportunist, serves as Lewis and Clark's interpreter, and from among his many wives he chooses Sacajawea to accompany them because she can help the explorers barter for horses from the Shoshone. In short paragraphs of staccato prose-poetry, Sacajawea offers her perspective on the arduous government-sponsored journey by foot, horseback and canoe in search of a water route to the Pacific. Her account is filled with her wide-eyed wonder at the strange ways of the white man-a party of 30 dragging their extravagant luggage over the mountains, writhing to the exotic tune of a fiddle and endlessly writing in diaries ("You watch the men write in their journals. What do they say with the gnarl of their letters? How can they say what the land is like with their marks?"). Throughout the book, excerpts from the actual diaries of Lewis and Clark serve as a counterpoint to Sacajawea's more intimate observations and mystical interpretations of their adventures. Though Glancy writes gracefully, Sacajawea's responses to the white men are predictable, and she never quite becomes a memorable character. Still, Glancy's sharply observed details and lyrical stylings make for a lively, thought-provoking read.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Glancy, a prizewinning novelist and poet, has lyrically breathed new life into a seemingly exhausted legend. Sacajawea, the Shoshone native who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their famed expedition, narrates this fictional version of the magnificent, yet harrowing, journey. As told through the heart of a woman and through the spirit of a Native American, the Lewis and Clark expedition takes on entirely new contours. Though Lewis and Clark see with their eyes and record their observations diligently--excerpts from their personal diaries are inserted on every page--Sacajawea is blessed with an inner vision that puts an earthy and vibrant spin on each individual experience and encounter. Though Sacajawea's story has been recounted time and again, Glancy's intimate portrait of this remarkable woman's physical and spiritual odyssey operates on a more mystical plane and is well worth investigating. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 225 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Hardcover; Ex-Library edition (February 24, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158567365X
• ISBN-13: 978-1585673650
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,019,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Journey of Lewis and Clark from a different perspective, March 14, 2005

By 

JaayGeee (Wenatchee, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea (Hardcover)

This is a beautifully written and brilliantly conceived telling of the Journey of Discovery from the imagined point of view of Sacajawea. Ms. Glancy dispensed with the myths surrounding S's role as guide and simply told of the adventures and rigors of the trip from the point of view of a lonely l6-year old mother with a two month old son and a brutal husband. The juxtaposition of Lewis' journal with the views of Sacajawea was fascinating. I loved this book and will remember its magic for quite some time.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Indian Tales, Historic & Modern, December 1, 2004

By 

D. Spears - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea (Hardcover)

I read both this and several other novels by the same author,though none of them is easy reading. They are sometimes not the most exciting read but they are well informed about Indian culture and other aspects of history:perhaps the best is her first novel,"Pushing The Bear" about the Cherokee Trail of Tears in 1838. It is both erudite and historical and contains a great deal of grueling detail about the history of this perilous journey filled with treacherous pitfalls and the grim reality of death; also it provides many details about the Cherokee's animistic religion, dance rituals, language and world view. Revd. Bushyhead, a secondary character, is a Christian minister, formerly a Cherokee; the novel also contains conjurers or shamans. "Pushing the Bear" is a metaphorical way the lead character Maritole, a young Cherokee female, has of describing the difficulties of the journey. "Stone Heart" is about Lewis and Clark's journey up the Missouri and Columbia Rivers in 1807, where Sacajawea a Shoshone Indian kidnapped in her youth served as a part-time guide and interpreter. This novel is notable for its numerous excerpts from Lewis's and Clark's actual journals in the margins, as well as for Sacajawea's fictional musings about various aspects of the trip, including many references to her baby Jean Baptiste,who is often sick, to hunted animals, landmarks, horses and to various Indian cultures. Sacajawea was Charbanneau's husband, a rather brutal fellow. A map is also provided which is very helpful.
The two contemporary novels, "Flutie" and "The Mask-Maker", both set in Oklahoma, were also interesting. The first is about an adolescent 1/2 Indian girl from a family of mechanics in Oklahoma with a developmental disability (she can't speak) who eventually overcomes her disability to become a geology teacher. The novel is good at portraying her day-to-day life as well as her mythical or symbolic dreams derived from her Indian heritage which seem to lead to her interest in geology. "The Mask Maker" is about a divorced half -Indian mother of two who becomes a mask- maker and travels to Oklahoma high schools teaching this art. The latter novel also uses the technique of additional text in the margin to clarify or expand on the main text. Her house and trunk of her car are full of her masks. You will be impressed by Diane Glancy's knowledge of Indian history and religion and culture in any or all of these 4 novels. For example, "Flutie" discusses sweat lodges, while "The Mask Maker" has information on the Pawnees and on Pawnee Bill who was a business associate of Buffalo Bill.

8 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sacajawea Deserves Better, March 9, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea (Hardcover)

The mythical status of Sacajawea is seductive indeed, and Diane Glancy attempts to fashion a novel that gives that myth a much needed rest, trying to get into the voice and experience of the "real" Sacajawea, but as always, language is the heart and soul of any recreation of historical voice, and here is where voice fails Glancy. The writing simply is not good enough. The second person narration makes the character a bit too literary, a bit to fashionable, leaving this reader bored by its simplistic syntax and unimaginative detail. Who knows what Sacajawea thought and dreamed! As Irish poet Eavan Boland suggests, one improvises when faced with this mystery. The improvisaiton here is uninspired. The fragments of journals from the expedition, rather than moving the novel along, impede its flow. This novel is considered experimental, I suppose, but the experiment fails. Why? Because the voice and language fail.