Customer Reviews

The Wild Girl: The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

In 1999, elderly photographer Ned Giles explains one of his photographs to a man attending a New York showing of Giles's photos. The image is of a young Apache girl in a Mexican jail. The girl, Giles says, was called "the wild girl," and was found naked and starving in Mexico's Sierra Madre. The man purchases the photograph, leaving Giles to remember the girl's story, and his own, in detail. The tale, relayed by journal entries, flashbacks, and from the point of view of several characters, is set in 1932 and begins with the girl running desperately through the arroyo below the Sierra Madre while the cougar hunter Billy Flowers chases her.

Seventeen-year-old Ned Giles joins a large expedition as a photojournalist to Mexico to retrieve a kidnapped boy from the Apaches. Ned makes friends with wealthy and outspokenly gay Tolley, cultural anthropologist Margaret, and his own young assistant, Jesus.

Meanwhile, Flowers chases the Apache girl again, as she has escaped. The girl had been with her family, in a raid led by her crazy brother-in-law, Indio Juan, when they kidnapped the rich rancher's little boy. She remembers the kidnapping as she hides in a cave from Flowers. When Flowers finally catches the wild girl, he has no idea what to do with her, and so he takes her to the nearby town jail.

In the tiny village of Bavispe, Sonora, Ned encounters the shocking sight of the Apache girl tied to a post in front of the jail. He arranges to bathe and clothe her. Along with his friends, he hatches a plan that should benefit everyone, including the girl and the kidnapped boy --- trade the girl for the kidnapped boy. A small band consisting of Ned, the girl, an English butler, Tolley, Margaret, Jesus, and two Indian scouts set off to accomplish the mission. The Apaches soon capture them, and Ned finds himself in "...another world, a world with its own sun and moon, and its own separate race of man" --- and in imminent mortal danger.

As a tribute to Jim Fergus's talents as a storyteller, I literally could not put down this novel, staying up until nearly dawn to finish it. The characters are full-blooded and alive; the adventure unfolds at a breathless pace and the descriptions are lyrical. As I watched Ned Giles leave chilly Chicago to set off on his adventure, my mind movie changed from black and white to warm Technicolor. The story felt so real that I actually checked (several times!) to be sure that the word "novel" hadn't somehow changed to "nonfiction" on the jacket flap. This is one of the best books I've read in years, and a story that will remain with me. Very highly recommended.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon

It's funny how authors invest the very act of writing with a kind of sweet magic, whether to exorcise demons, or merely to kink history by telling the way it should have been.

Now Jim Fergus, one of the West's premier literary storytellers, has undertaken the resurrection of a long-dead Indian child, and given her the history he wishes she'd had - not the painful truth of her existence.

"The Wild Girl" is, in every respect, a historical novel, inspired by several true stories. Fergus embroiders his tale with enough threads of truth (and a healthy bibliography) that it resonates with authenticity, but the heart and soul of the story are equal parts of Fergus' hope and imagination. And it's a little prayer that somehow the truth can truly be rewritten.

Fergus is a poetic writer, but not a florid one. His gift is in simple prose, vivid action and human stories. Like other literary writers of the West, the landscape and climate loom large as distinct characters that color the hearts, minds and actions of the human players. For the money and genre, Fergus is as good a storyteller as Kent Haruf, William Kittredge, Ivan Doig and Thomas McGuane, and with Mark Spragg and others, represents the next wave of gifted regional authors.

(And for those fans of Fergus' columns and nonfiction, a sad note: His faithful yellow Labrador Sweetzer, a fixture in Fergus' 1999 road-essay book, "The Sporting Road," died in 2003.)

This new novel's journal structure, punctuated by third-person segments from other points of view, is an authorial minefield, but Fergus tiptoes through it skillfully. While telling his story in the journal structure might have been safer, it also would have mirrored the structure of "One Thousand White Women." The current commercialism of publishing notwithstanding, who can blame an author for not wanting to repeat himself?

Moreover, who can blame an author for wanting to rewrite an unpleasant history? "The Wild Child" is a tragic life seen through a prism of time, heartbreak and distance, and the light has been refracted into something poignant and spiritual.

Jim Fergus weaves an enduring tale of Ned Giles' trials and tribulations growing up in an unknown corner of the United States.

Set during the Great Depression, Giles sets off on an adventure to free a young white boy from the bronco Apaches. Fergus is masterful in entertwining a great adventure with the personal growth of Giles as he struggles to learn that life is seldom black-and-white.

When Giles looks back over the decades at his time in the southwest, it's with the acknowledgement that all of the decisions that we make send us down a path in life that is uniquely our own.

Fergus tells his story with the same detached, honest assessment as Giles does when he's hiding behind his camera, capturing the lives of the bronco Apaches.

I loved this book. Simply loved it. The weaving of historical fact and fiction--the emotional heart that drives the story. The writing itself.

A captivating, entertaining read. Told in journal format, this book follows Ned as he journeys into manhood. Orphaned as a teenager, Ned has to discover how to survive during the depression. He strikes out for Arizona to join the Great Apache Expedition to rescue the young son of a mexican rancher who has been captured by Apache indians. The mix of characters he encounters is entertaining and intersting. The story builds until he encounters La Nina Bronca who is destined to change the life of Ned and all of his friends. Situations will be faced, decisions made and futures forged as they deal with daily life in the wilds of 1932 Mexico.

"The Wild Girl" is an incredible story set in the Mexican/American southwest of the early 1930s. In his second novel Fergus explores the Sierra Madre Mountains as well as his imaginative abilities to craft a story of adventure, compassion and love against its backdrop. Ned Giles is a teenage Chicagoan orphaned by the death of his mother and the suicide of his father. When threatened with the possibility of foster care, he heads west to pursue his dreams of photography. While Giles pursues his dreams, Billy Flowers, hunter of mountain-lions, trees an Apache girl, Chideh, who has been separated from her tribe. Chideh's and Giles' lives converge in an Arizona town where an expedition is forming to search for the kidnapped son of a wealthy Mexican rancher. As the distance between the hunters and the hunted shortens the adventure and danger intensifies, climaxing at a showdown that earned the author a permanent place on my favorite authors list.

Populated with characters that are as rich as its landscape, "The Wild Girl" opens a window to Native American history that makes me want to know more. The story is revealed by way of notebook entries made by Ned Giles during his cross country trip to Arizona and subsequent travels with the expedition. This first person approach works well for the story, creating a level of trust and intimacy that only a first person account of what these characters lived through could provide. The novel is well researched, evident first by the historical feel rendered from the text then confirmed by the bibliographical note at the end. I finished the novel wanting to keep in touch with some of the people that I met on the expedition and that's a credit to the easily accessible writing and wonderfully creative story telling of Fergus. The paperback edition comes with a Reading Group Guide and an excerpt from a conversation with the author to boot! I'm highly recommending this book and anxiously waiting for the next. Enjoy!

I cannot believe this book got bad reviews from other readers. This was a great book that captures you from the beginning. It was not a let down after reading the writers 1st great novel "One Thousand White Women".

Jim Fergus is a wonderful writer that truly brings you into the fantastic scenes of the west in the early 1900's. To step into the perspective of the women characters in this book must be extremely hard to do.

I highly recommend this book as well as "One Thousand White Women".

I enjoyed this one. Jim Fergus is certainly an excellent teller of stories and I do like his prose and discriptive details. This story fall into a category of what you might call speculative historical fiction. The research was good, quite accurate and as I pointed out, the author certainly has a gift for discription. This is not what I call a page turner, but that is okay. His character development, his ability to set moods and to catch the feeling of the moment make this work well worth the read. I can recommend this one.

Another great story from Jim Fergus imagination about Indians, whites and the north American far west . Bought this book after having read his first novel "One thousand white women...". Will read it again for pleasure when it will come back to me.

This is a beautiful, haunting story. Jim Fergus is a wonderful writer with a special talent for making the reader really hear and see the people and locations of which he writes.

This is the story of seventeen year old orphan Ned Giles who wants excitement and adventure after his parents' death in 1932. He leaves Chicago to find his fortune on The Great Apache Expedition, which is detemined to find the last wild band of Apaches in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico and retrieve a Mexican boy they have kidnapped. You already know after the opening chapter of the book that there won't be a happy ending, but go along for the ride with Ned anyway. You won't regret it.