12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Grrrrrrreat!, November 15, 2001
A (surprisingly) believable and downright fascinating story of a man found in the wild, thought to be a sort of "missing link," forced to endure the loss of his freedom as well as his dignity. He is rapidly losing his will to live, until he meets Sydney, the woman who clearly sees what the others refuse to admit, that "Ontario Man" is an intelligent human male, like any other, with very real thoughts and feelings, made all the more real and honest by his lack of human contact. A simple, sweet gesture from Sydney's young brother can render him near tears, and his naked desire and affection for Sydney makes him touchingly vulnerable, yet somewhat dangerous, given his difficulty in grasping the social etiquette of the day (1890's). A grown-up Tarzan-and-Jane story, which is surprisingly quite touching. I read this book in a little over a day!
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unique and wonderful!, June 10, 2002
I will not go into the plot since other reviewers have already done so. I just wanted to add that this is the most unique story I have ever read. The characters are so vividly drawn that by the end of the book I felt as I knew them personally. Try this book you will not regret it. :)
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Hero, April 29, 2007
This book is completely unbelievable, but who cares when the hero is so wonderful? For some reason, I enjoy stories about "wild" people adjusting to life back in civilization. I read Alice Hoffman's Second Nature (Gaffney's admitted inspiration for this book) many years ago, and I've also seen the great Truffaut film, The Wild Child. Gaffney's book is interesting because, being a romance novel, it has a happy ending - the wild man adapts to society and finds a home.
This story takes place in 1893 in Chicago during the World's Fair. The hero's name is Michael MacNeil and as a young boy he was on a rafting expedition in Canada with his aunt and uncle in which no one survived but him. He spent the next 18 years living in the wild, alone except for animal friends. Then he is found and locked up as a human "oddity." The heroine, Sydney, meets Michael because her father is an anthropologist who wants to study him to prove whether human beings are innately good or bad. Eventually, her father abandons his study of Michael, and Sydney and her two brothers decide to help him learn to adjust to the civilized world.
This book had a lot of really cute scenes, and I loved how slowly and believably Sydney and Michael fell in love. I also loved the characters of her two younger brothers. Where I think the book dropped the ball a bit was in its characterization of the time period. Gaffney points out how horrible it is that Michael is caged at first - but when Sydney and her family visit the World's Fair, there is no mention of the hundreds of people who were similarly on "display" at the Fair. The character of Michael has a HUGE problem with animals being caged at the zoo, but there are no comments about the Exposition's Midway Plaisance? I personally find the objectification of people at the 1893 Fair far more objectionable than a zoo (although a 1893 zoo was bad, too) and I wish it had been addressed.
That's sort of a minor problem, though, when the overall romantic wonderfulness of the book is taken into account. Highly recommended!
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