by Jim Fergus

Like Jim Fergus’s previous novel, ONE THOUSAND WHITE WOMEN, this one looks back into the history of the American West to tell a story of tensions between Native Americans and whites. In THE WILD GIRL, an eighty-something photographer named Ned Giles recalls an episode from 1932 through the diaries he kept at the time. As a young man, Ned was part of an expedition to find and free a boy who was captured by the Apaches--using an Apache girl as ransom. Ned has photographed the girl, and her narrative combines with extracts from Ned’s diaries to tell a story that resonates years later, and that lays bare some of the harsh truths about the American presence in the West.