Fiction Tuesday- Bohemian Girl

Who you be really?  He says in the wait, until he looks around for an answer from somebody else. 

Nobody else is what he sees.   A beaver of a badger at best, relocating themselves downriver.
I work at a word.  Camphor, I say.
I have that, he laughs.  That’s not your name.
I could read it on a box, when I could read, I say.
A reader, he hmmms.  He begins to put out what he’s brought in his load.  Well, missus Reader, this here is soap, this here is dry goods.  I never met a lady who could resist dry goods, especially one in a bonnet on a hot day with nobody to talk to.-Bohemian Girl

Paul Iacono as the peddler.

 

My First thoughts: I absolutely love this book. Possibly, it has to do with the syntax of it, than anything else. Actually, its a very old story that happens in our area west of here on the prairie back in the 1860's. Its about a girl who was given to an old Indian to pay her father's debt. We don't really know for sure if her name is Harriet, but decides to call her self this after losing a close friend Harriet that she met who was one of the Indian's slaves. Harriet killed herself with bad mushrooms. She'd been previously scalped by the Indians and left by her father on the prairie because he couldn't be reminded of the misery that happened there. Its a moving story and written by a Nebraska native that lives in New York City. The author was inspired by a Willa Cather quote, "You remember how her eyes used to snap when we called her the Bohemian Girl?"

Troian Bellsario would be the main character in my movie.

Wes Studi as the Indian who needed slaves to make his mound.(my dreamcast)

This is a story about the power of men. Yet, it was women who were the backbone of the west. The main character does manage to find her purpose in life even if it might be accidentally.


As the story starts, she has a doll make from a tree limb, but somehow it gets lose from her and floats down the stream. Of course, she has to endure time and all it has to offer. Bad people. Bad weather and even landing in a town during a bad time. Along the way she's handed over a baby to take care of.

(more dreamcasting)Jackson Rathbone as Henry who comes home to his mother after the civil war, but he has a few secrets of his own. 

Also, the story keeps bringing back the theme "its a small world". She keeps meeting the Jewish peddler who is peddling his goods along the prairie. Finally, after the war, she meets Henry. She minds the general store. All the while, she still gets mixed up with the old Indian who once took her a slave.


Also, her past comes back to haunt her. But what is worse is how the town's women decide that the boy who is with her might need to be taken away to a special school because he won't speak. Of course, he speaks to her.

Nolan Gould as the boy who she raises that doesn't quite seem to be like other kids in town.(Just one more to add to the dreamcast)

This novel it in the nature of True Grit. But I loved the voice this author gave this girl. I loved the way the story came full circle.

This has to be my favorite literary book of 2011. 

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