Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea

Rating:
Summary: Indian Tales, Historic & Modern
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A prose-poem that peers into the soul of Sacajawea
Review: I read this book a few months ago and couldn't stop thinking about it. Combining excerpts from the journals of Lewis and Clark with a beautifully written prose poem written from Sacajawea's point-of-view, this book, although fiction, gives a realistic voice to the women of this story.

I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to feel what it must have been like for a women to travel with this group of explorer's on their journey across America.

Rating:
Summary: Sacajawea Deserves Better
Review: 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.