Comment: One more month has gone and here we are for another TBR Challenge post! The theme for March is "tropetastic!" and I suppose pretty much any choice would fit somehow, but I've decided to pick a book that would have a trope - opposites attract - and a certain expectation to it, since it would feature protagonists from different cultures, a Native American and a white woman.
In this book, Cynthia Wells is a young 16 year old who is traveling with her parents and younger brother to the west, where things aren't as "civilized" as back East for her father is a preacher. Everything is a novelty here including the fact there are Indians around and they seem to be dangerous but this doesn't stop her from freeing one, Red Wolf, after seeing how he is treated and tortured. This action has consequences, which change her life and some time later she is kidnapped by other Indians and is taken to Red Wolf, someone very different from what others have said he was. They fall in love and learn to be a couple but the whites would not care that she is now happy and their lives among the Indian community are still in danger. Is there any hope for them to be together?
There will be some spoilers!
Well. This is my first book by the author, and I've gotten the paperback edition from an used books site, some years ago, when I was feeling in the mood for some stories featuring Native American characters. Years have passed, of course, but I thought this might be a good time to try this one, even though it is a book which was published in 1990 and surely this would mean situations/plot choices I'd feel annoyed at, but nothing like trying.
It wasn't great, no, for those reasons exactly. I wasn't as bothered by the racist and xenophobic allusions throughout the novel because I expected those, considering the fact this is an historical and that there's a note on the author's bio at the back claiming she is known for her historical accuracy. What I feel angry at is that, in spite of this, the text (and the characters at times) come across as insensitive, which might be correct for the time the story takes place (late 1800s) and the way of things when this was written (certainly late 80s for this to be published in 1990). Still, I kind of wanted the author to place herself above this, and to showcase compassion, and a little more empathy in how she would write.
Anyway, the plot is pretty much simple, Cynthia and Red Wolf meet when she helps him, there's attraction there but both think they will never see each other again, until she is kidnapped. It turns out that the man kidnapping her isn't the villain she assumes and she reunites with Red Wolf. Her way of seeing things and lifestyle does contrast immensely with what she now needs to do around the other Natives and their families but Cynthia is one of those heroines who adapts easily and their life gets on track.
They fall in love and the many things that should keep them apart don't really matter. Cynthia is ready to be Red Wolf's wife and at this point I felt the romance was more than done but then, we were half way through the book, certainly problems would appear yet... and they do. I think the author's writing style wasn't bad and there were passages/situations in which things were presented in a way that gave me food for thought. The dated aspects of the writing style and the inherent issues related to how one would write about these themes back them were glaring but until a certain point not truly abhorrent. I was not enjoying this exactly, but it wasn't distasteful either.
Then, there's a plot change and Cynthia is taken from Red Wolf after a terrible attack of the whites on the settlement where Cynthia and the others were living. This led to her going back to her family and to need to re adapt to living among "her kind" once more, for her family forces her to go back East, but this time she had another issue to deal with, for she is pregnant and her child will clearly not be like her. I did like that, in this part of the novel, Cynthia seemed to have gained self assurance in who she was and in her feelings, she never renegaded Red Wolf, she loved her child and she proudly assumed him among others.
Years go by and then the story was going towards its end, so now Cynthia is older, more mature and all that and she assumes Red Wolf forgot her so she decides to marry so that she can try to have more children and "move on". At this point, I was certainly rooting for this heroine and when she marries a seemingly good man, running for some political thing, I thought how would the author deal with this, an incredibly dramatic scene in which she sees Red Wolf and her husband martyrs himself so that she can live her eternal love in happiness? Well, the author disappointed me here, very, very badly. Things don't work out between Cynthia and her husband because they don't have a good sex life.
Years in which they are both miserable and why? Well, her husband is actually gay and of course this would not have been easy to accept and much less to process. But I was still so, so disappointed that Cynthia reacts poorly when she finds out, that the husband is made to seem to "battle a demon" and that when they talk, she is disgusted while keeping his secret at the same time, as if this is the epitome of a good heart! Arghh! How this annoyed me... I mean, I understand the dual setting for this story, the historical content and the 1990 publishing date but.... so, so disappointing.
No comments:
Post a Comment