Summary: A series of tales about a photographer's developing relationship with the Native Americans he astonishes by showing them pictures of themselves is interspersed with parallel tales about an unsung soldier, a husband, and a father.
Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ Wiggins is a writer who paints elegant pictures with words. So who better to tell the story of Edward Sheriff Curtis, the enigmatic photographer of the American West, protege of J. P. Morgan, and friend of Theodore Roosevelt? She chooses to tell the story from her own point of view, through a fictionalized version of herself, called by her own name. Summoned to Hollywood to discuss turning her book about Curtis into a movie, Wiggins makes it plain to the director, who wants to make him a romantic hero, that he was anything but. He paid the Bureau of Indian Affairs a fee to photograph inside the reservations that he drove to in his car, abandoning his wife and four children and spending all their money to follow his obsession. At the same time she is pitching the movie, her personal life gets a bit hectic, and the links between Curtis' past and her present intertwine, if a little too coincidentally, at least very interestingly. The book slips from Wiggins' point of view to that of Curtis' long-suffering wife, Clara. The pages are liberally sprinkled with photographs, insights, realistic pathos, and human situations. This creative novel will not disappoint. ((Reviewed May 1, 2007)) Copyright 2007 Booklist Reviews.
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