Black Elk in Paris

kate horsley

It's 1888, and Paris is drunk on its own beauty and scientific and artistic accomplishment. The city is poised to host the Universal Exposition, a testimony to French power and colonization, and to unveil its extraordinary centerpiece, the Eiffel Tower. Philippe Normand is a modest, likable physician who, in his profession, is privy to the foibles and addictions of the rich, the desperation of the poor, and the egotism of his colleagues. He is a regular guest at the dinner table of the Balise family, whose health he has cared for over many years. He is especially close to Madou, the strong-willed youngest daughter in the family, who is fed up with the arrogance of French culture and the constraints it puts on women. Philippe himself is lonely, burnt out on his profession, and disillusioned with conventional medical science. While attending a Wild West show that is touring Europe, Madou is strangely drawn to the Native American Black Elk. "Choice" —as he is known in the show—is seen as an oddity by French society; he is a mysterious figure, poised and uncannily intuitive, but desperately homesick. Philippe and Madou try to help him, but it is Choice who ends up transforming the lives of all those around him.

Genres fictionhistoricalhistorical fiction19th centuryfrance

214 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,2006

This edition

Format: 214 pages, Hardcover
Published: March 14, 2006 by Trumpeter
ISBN: 9781590303290
ASIN: 1590303296
Language: English

About the author

kate horsley

Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1952, Kate Horsley Parker, the youngest of five children, loved to read. Her mother, Alice Horsley Parker, inspired that love, which is part of the reason that she chose to write under her mother's maiden name. In her mother's world, young women were to be educated and refined and passionate. While in a private girl's school in Virginia during the sixties, Horsley protested against the Vietnam War and worked in the Civil Rights movement. And then she went off to college and off to Paris for summer school. Every event in life was marked by a book, an almost prophetic glimpse into what would become a passion. After reading a book by Alan Watts, Horsley's flirtation with Zen Buddhism became a lifelong fling. Flying to Paris, she read Black Elk Speaks, one of several works on or by Native Americans that inspired her to move to the West. It was her Masters Thesis work on Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Silko that propelled her to travel to New Mexico where she has lived since 1977. She got a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. The research she did on women in the American West inspired her to make novels out of the dimly known but awesome lives of ordinary people in extraordinary times. Horsley has been teaching college English in New Mexico for over twenty years and is involved in hospice work.

Horsley dedicated her first published novel to her mother, and the other five to her son Aaron, who died at the age of eighteen in 2000.