The Wild Girl : The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932 | Jim Fergus

The Wild Girl : The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932 | Jim Fergus | Native American life

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The Wild Girl : Th...

	The Wild Girl : The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932 Jim Fergus Amazon Remainders Account, 2005 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 34 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Now in paperback, a stirring historical novel from the author of One Thousand White Women

When Ned Giles is orphaned as a teenager, he heads West hoping to leave his troubles behind. He joins the 1932 Great Apache Expedition on their search for a young boy, the son of a wealthy Mexican landowner, who was kidnapped by wild Apaches. But the expedition?s goal is complicated when they encounter a wild Apache girl in a Mexican jail cell, victim of a Mexican massacre of her tribe that has left her orphaned and unwilling to eat or speak. As he and the expedition make their way through the rugged Sierra Madre mountains, Ned?s growing feelings for the troubled girl soon force him to choose allegiances and make a decision that will haunt him forever.

In this novel based on historical fact, Jim Fergus takes readers on a journey of magnificent sweep and heartbreaking consequence peopled with unforgettable characters. With prose so vivid that the road dust practically rises off the page, The Wild Girl is an epic novel filled with drama, peril, and romance, told by a master. This is the novel your reading group will be talking about long past your discussion!

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Not completely original, but an awesome remix

When reading this book I had the gnawing suspicion that I'd heard the story before. My husband, a borderlands historian, confirmed this when he read it. Fergus does borrow from a lot of different sources, border tales, expeditions and border books. However, the end-result is an awesome remix, an odd, adventure spirited story that inspires both excitement, mystery, and fear. The book is based on lots of things, but is presented with richly developed characters, plot, and laugh-out-loud humor. In the end, you can't help but assume the author made it all up, or nostalgically hope that it really happened.

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Native American life

A wonderful novel of the tragedy that the Apaches suffered and retaliation they took upon the US West and the Mexicans. Fiction with historic facts.

I was sucked in

I liked this book an awful lot. First off, Jim Fergus has also written hunting guides, so the areas of the book that relate to hunting or tracking or outdoor survival are very well written.

The author was told a story about a "wild girl" and the end of her story was shrouded with suspicion so became the book.

I thought it was well written, the author's writing style is highly entertaining and makes for a quick read, when I finished the book I read the Author's notes about circumstances that were artistically "recreated" for the book, and this led me on a very satisfactory journey of research, but even if you are not that ambitious, the book itself is a very good read.

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A helluva good yarn, but a "journal'?

I like Jim Fergus's writing. He is one of the best yarn spinners around these days, as was evidenced several years ago with his first novel, One Thousand White Women. The only problem I have with him, particularly in this book, The Wild Girl, is that of his choice of format. The story supposedly represents the "journals" of Ned Stiles, a seventeen year-old orphan from Chicago who lights out for the territories in the midst of the Depression, to join an expedition to rescue a Mexican child stolen by the last of the "wild" Apaches, yadda-yadda blah-blah. Well, like I said, this is one HECK of a great story, but I kept finding myself thinking, Wow this 17 year-old kid sure can write! Because, of course, the writing does not at ALL sound like a teenager's work, even if he's a bit precocious. Fergus does tell us he's in his first year of college when he quits and heads west, but I mean, come-ON, Jim. Here's an example of young Neddie's prose -

"We rode out of camp at dawn the next morning, a clear windless day in the plains of Chihuahua, the mountains still black agains the horizon, the pale sky cloudless, darkened only by Mexico's ubiquitous circling buzzards, for whom, before the day was out, we would make fresh carrion."

And there's lots more of fine writing just like that. Nope, sorry to both Fergus and to Samuel Coleridge, I simply was unable to willingly suspend my disbelief. This is more like prose learned at the Iowa Writers Workshop than something that a Chicago orphaned teenager would write. I mean it's REALLY good stuff! I loved the book, Jim, but the journal device was just stretched waaaay to thin here. An omniscient narrator or an old man looking back woulda been more believable. But, having said all this, don't stop now, Jim Fergus. More stories, please! - Tim Bazzett, author of Soldier Boy: At Play in the ASA

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Good yarn diminished by 1930s movie dialogue

My feelings at the end of the book were stronger than what I felt as I worked my way through it, cringing and trying to ignore the Andy Hardy dialogue that got in the way of a really good story. The epilogue and the author's afterword explaining how he came upon the story of the Bronco Apache girl salvaged it for me. But the characters were almost cartoonish and lacked character development. The back story for Margaret was laughably shallow given her horrific childhood, and if Ned referred to Jesus one more time as "kid" I would have pulled my hair out. Still, the story itself was strong and for that reason I recommend it.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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