The Wild Girl
Jim Fergus
(Reviewer - Coletta Ollerer)
2005 Hyperion
ISBN: 1401300545

The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932.

Ned Giles, a 17-year-old orphan is working in the clubhouse at the Racket Club in Chicago when one of the members posts a notice: “The Great Apache Expedition: This expedition ... plans to go into the Sierra Madre Mountains on the boundary between Sonora & Chihuahua, Mexico, to attempt to recover the seven-year-old son of Fernando Huerta…the boy having been stolen by the Apache Indians... when three years old...” Ned decides to drive his father's Studebaker Roadster, the last vestige of his old life to Douglas, Arizona, where the expedition is being organized, in the hope of becoming the expedition photographer. What he finds in Douglas is every boy's dream adventure.

Associate Reviewer Coletta Ollerer writes:

This is an exciting story about events that took place in the early 20th century when a small band of Apaches still roamed the Southwest with hate in their hearts for anyone not Apache.

With his father's death, teenage Ned Giles has been orphaned. He takes his father's last piece of advice written in a note, & buys a camera. Photography has been a huge interest in his life although he works to support himself at a wealthy Chicago gentlemen's club. There he reads an advertisement recruiting volunteers for an expedition into Apache Territory to rescue a child, abducted by the natives some years before.

The Great Apache Expedition is directed at wealthy members as an interesting trip for which they are to provide for all their own needs. Ned writes to the address asking if he might go as a paid member of the party. Before he can receive an answer he loses his job & decides to take his camera & head out to Douglas, Arizona where the expedition is massing. As luck would have it he meets up with a photographer already there, looking for an assistant & he is hired.

Ned is settling into the routine when a professional game hunter comes into town with an Apache girl he captured in the wilderness. This is the wild girl.

“There I witnessed a sight such as I have never before seen. An Indian girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, was tethered by a rope to a hitching post in front of the jailhouse. She sat on her haunches in the dirt, peering out at the crowd through fiercely tangled hair... The girl was filthy, streaked with dirt, sweat, and blood, dressed in a soiled man's shirt and high moccasins. Even from a distance I could smell her”. (p. 122) She is also ferocious & bites & draws the blood of anyone who comes near her. The authorities manage to get her into a jail cell where she curls up & prepares to die.

Ned's photography skills allows him to gain entrance into the jail where he takes pictures of her. & there he becomes intrigued by her wildness.

The idea is formulated that the girl should be taken on the expedition as a trade for the young kidnapped boy. Ned convinces Joseph, an Apache scout with the expedition, to talk the girl out of her resolve to die, & convince her she should make the trip. They set out with the wild girl to find the Apache tribe who is holding the kidnapped child. After some days on the trail the girl seems to relax, so she is freed from her bonds. That's when she takes off into the inhospitable wilderness. When they set out to find her the adventure escalates.

The author's technique of telling the story in the form of journals kept by Ned is especially fascinating as it pulls readers into the action as if we are present. Action being the key word here. This is a tale full of hazards & risks as the last hold-out of wild people try to protect their way of life from invasion of the ‘white eyes’.

The Wild Girl is an enjoyable read, full of extraordinary events about a tribe of people who continue to fascinate Americans & Mexicans alike. It is not a story soon to be forgotten.

More from Jim Fergus: One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd: A Novel
(11/06/05)

Coletta
2005©Coletta Ollerer
A RebeccasReads.Com Associate Reviewer

Reviewer's Bio:
I have always enjoyed writing. As a teenager I submitted to magazines like Seventeen, & was politely rejected. As a young mother, I had several poems published in The Chicago Tribune. Born in Chicago in 1932, I still live in the area. Since I retired, I have had some success on the Internet with my book reviews, stories & poetry. I enjoy historical fiction mostly, but will read anything uplifting, informative & fun. When I'm not reading & writing, I'm making jewelry, sewing needlepoint, & painting.