Black Elk in Paris / Kate Horsley

I have to admit I picked up Kate Horsley's Black Elk in Paris (FIC HORSLEY) partially because of the cover. Luckily I was rewarded for my superficiality with a great story. Set in Paris at the time of the 1889 Universal Exposition (click here to view actual photos of the exposition, courtesy of the Library of Congress), the story revolves around Black Elk, a Native American healer who has been abandoned in Paris by Buffalo Bill's traveling Wild West show. The story is told from the perspective of a bachelor physician who frequents the home of the Parisian family with whom Black Elk stays. The author uses the city of Paris almost as another character in the book. It is beautiful and self-indulgent, by turns poignant and callous. All the characters are changed by their contact with Black Elk, the "savage" who desperately longs for his troubled homeland in America.

Author Kate Horsley has a simple but lyrical writing style and a penchant for unusual storylines. Her characters tend to have a mystical bent and live in times of great cultural change. She also wrote Confessions of a Pagan Nun (FIC HORSLEY), the story of a Druid woman who becomes a Christian nun in the days of the expansion of the Christianity to the British Isles. I give both books the thumbs-up.