If a Lion Could Talk (Paperback, Bison Books Ed)

Miss Walker (Winter Wheat, The Southwest Corner) returns to a presumably leisured and patient mature audience, in this tale of the spiritual-cum-marital problems which overtake a young Eastern clergyman in the early 19th century. Mark Ryegate, certain of his call, travels with his young adoring wife Harriet to the upper Missouri region as a missionary to the Indians. His failure to accomplish much in the way of conversions nags him, but it is the vision of an eagle's flight realized in a half-waking encounter with Eenisskim, the mysterious Indian wife of the settlement's white leader, which obsesses and haunts him after his forlorn return to his church in Massachusetts. He had attempted to comfort her on the death of her son but had been baffled and defeated by her withdrawal. Now he becomes estranged from Harriet, removed from his church, involved in anti-slavery work and is nearly killed by a mob - while he probes the true spiritual meaning of love and helping humanity. But together Harriet and Mark complement one another's understanding of their wilderness days and the wilderness of their own making. Finally at the close Mark recognizes his own self-deceptions and illustrations with a deadly clarity. Some mildly stimulating notions, but weighted with declamatory dialogue and explicit, repetitive statements. (Kirkus Reviews)

Harriet Ryegate, the proper daughter of Massachusetts Puritans, is the first white woman to go far into the wilderness beyond the upper Missouri. With her husband, a Baptist minister, she seeks to convert the Blackfoot Indians to Christianity. But it is the Ryegates who are changed by their "journey into strangeness." Marcus Ryegate returns to Massachusetts obsessed by a beautiful Indian woman. For sermonizing about her, he pays a heavy price. Harriet, one of Mildred Walker's most fully realized characters, writes in her journal about "the effect of the Wilderness on civilized persons who are accustomed to live in the world of words." "If a Lion Could Talk" reveals the tragic lack of communication that stretches from Massachusetts to Missouri and beyond in the years before the Civil War--and the appalling heart of darkness that is close to home.

General

Imprint:	Bison Books
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	August 1995
First published:	August 1995
Authors:	Mildred Walker
Introduction by:	James Welch
Dimensions:	203 x 133 x 15mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Trade
Pages:	277
Edition:	Bison Books Ed
ISBN-13:	978-0-8032-9778-4
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-8032-9778-5
Barcode:	9780803297784

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