Blue Horse Dreaming: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Not a true rating, because . . .
Review: . . . I haven't read the book. I include the rating or my comments won't be posted and I want to be fair to the author.

But I may not have to read her book. In the review below, Luansos cordially offers the entire plotline, a little too much of it. I may just read the last 2-3 pages of the book to find out how it all comes out, though I think I know already.

Anyone who wants to read Ms. Wallace's book, which looks very good indeed, would do well not to pre-read Luansos detailed and overly helpful Cliff Notes.

Rating:
Summary: A haunting tale of love and loss
Review: Every so often a book comes along that captures a time and place so perfectly, that I am reluctant to turn the last page. In the case of Blue Horse Dreaming, that was my experience, for the novel beautifully blends plot with human shortcomings in a manner that is both painful and believable. Successfully channeling the post-Civil War era, author Melanie Wallace portrays soldiers and citizens alike in all their threadbare grief, suffering a lack of adequate supplies and a paucity of spirit in the unfriendly territory they occupy. On the far edge of nowhere, the sad drama unfolds.

Four years earlier, two women were taken captive by Indians and not seen since. However, when the soldiers capture three Indian braves on a foray into the wilderness, an exchange is arranged and the women are returned to their people. The women are significantly different, both in captivity and after their return to "civilization". While one hates her captors and endured through spite, the other, Abigail Buwell, appears to have found renewal and a home within the tribe. In an unwelcome homecoming, Abigail's only comfort is the blue roan she rides proudly into the outpost. She is noticeably pregnant, a fact that registers with the already disgruntled soldiers, as Abigail rebuffs any effort to communicate.

Only two men are allowed near Abigail and the blue roan: Cole, the smithy, also an outcast because of the color of his skin, and Major Robert Cutter, the officer in charge. Cutter's senses have been blunted by the physical and emotional rigors of war. His mind ravaged by loneliness and inner turmoil, Cutter is, in his way, as isolated as the pregnant young woman. Cutter's leadership abilities are compromised and his control over his charges disintegrates with each passing day. Ignored by all, save Cutter, Cole offers Abigail and her horse shelter.

Life is daily more brutal, more desperate, as those inside the outpost endure their privations. The soldiers eye Abigail suspiciously, convinced she is haunting the outpost: "Sentries shuddered on night duty... they thought strangers danced on their graves." Inhabiting what they believe is the most isolated place on earth, the men blame their unease on Abigail Buwell, as bizarre images poison their thoughts and drunkenness is their sole relief.

Blue Horse Dreaming offers a poignant retrospective of a difficult past, Wallace's prose filled with luminous insights and an acknowledgment of human dignity. While skillfully rendering the survival mentality within the fort, Wallace also engineers Cutter's emotional collapse and Abigail's purposeful withdrawal into the chambers of her memory. As the soul-weary and ineffectual senior officer, Major Cutter models the enormous price a man pays in pursuit of war. His emotional failures are mirrored in his men, as they all spiral downward.

The great and unexpected gift of Blue Horse Dreaming is hidden carefully within Abigail's heart. Before captivity, Abigail was passed from man to man, to each a chattel. Unremitting grief dominated her days, a few years of pure joy all that she has known of life. Only in the years of captivity has she understood freedom, that which is forever lost to her now: "Of inestimable sorrow, she can bear no more." Abigail's burden is great, but easily surpassed by her newly freed spirit. Most rewarding for this reader are the chapters revealing the details of Abigail's too brief respite with the People, those who loved and accepted as family She-Who-Was-Dreamed-By-the-Blue-Horse. Luan Gaines/ 2003.