The Buffalo Soldier - Hardcover

Bohjalian, Chris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0609608339 ISBN 13: 9780609608333

Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books, 2002

Synopsis

From the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Midwives and Trans-Sister Radio comes a hauntingly beautiful story of the ties that bind families—and the strains that pull them apart.
In northern Vermont, a raging river overflows its banks and sweeps the nine-year-old twin daughters of Terry and Laura Sheldon to their deaths. In the aftermath of the tragedy, the highway patrolman and his wife, unable to have more children, take in a foster child: a ten-year-old African-American boy who has been shuttled for years between foster families and group homes. Young Alfred cautiously enters the Sheldon family circle, barely willing to hope that he might find a permanent home among these kind people still distracted by grief.

Across the street from the Sheldons live an older couple who take Alfred under their wing, and it is they who introduce him to the history of the buffalo soldiers—African-American cavalry troopers whose reputation for integrity, honor, and personal responsibility inspires the child.

Before life has a chance to settle down, however, Terry, who has never been unfaithful to Laura, finds himself attracted to the solace offered by another woman. Their encounter, brief as it is, leaves her pregnant with his baby—a child Terry suddenly realizes he urgently wants.

From these fitful lives emerges a lyrical and richly textured story, one that explores the meaning of marriage, the bonds between parents and children, and the relationships that cause a community to become a family. But The Buffalo Soldier is also a tale of breathtaking power and profound moral complexity—and exactly the sort of novel readers have come to expect from Chris Bohjalian.

About this title

Review:

There are certain plots that possess inherent drama, and the saving of a lost child is one of them. In The Buffalo Soldier, Chris Bohjalian--who showed such flair for drama in the bestselling Oprah's Book Club® pick Midwives--gives us the story of 10-year-old Alfred, an African American foster child who is taken in by Terry and Laura Sheldon, a white couple whose twin daughters have drowned. Another child is also about to come on the scene: Terry has an affair, and the young woman becomes pregnant. Bohjalian takes his sweet time exploring these relationships, but he also writes scenes with the same tautness that made Midwives a page-turner. The result is a novel that's both readable and exhaustively fleshed out. As Alfred settles into the Sheldons' lives, we actually come to believe in the unlikely little family the three of them forge. Bohjalian narrates his story from the perspective of each of his principal characters, a method that can be tiresome, but here is made fresh by the author's clear vision: these people, you feel, are real to him. --Claire Dederer

From the Inside Flap:

Read by Allison Frasier
11 cassettes, 16 hours

In the tradition of his #1 New York Times bestselling novel Midwives, Chris Bohjalian returns with a story of love put to the test by a devastating loss and the redemption that can come from the most unexpected places.

Terry and Laura Sheldon experience an especially tragic version of every parent's nightmare. They lose not one but both of their children, nine-year-old twin girls, when a flash flood thunders through their small Vermont town. Shattered, the two spend a year trying to regain some measure of emotional equilibrium. Physically unable to have more children of their own, they finally decide to take in a foster child, Alfred, a ten-year-old African American boy.

Like life, THE BUFFALO SOLDIER then develops in divergent ways. Terry has a a brief affair with a young woman who becomes pregnant with his child - a child that Terry suddenly realizes he wants desperately. And Alfred, another soul hungry for love, is transformed through a neighbor's friendship and his tales of the Buffalo soldiers, African Americans who served in the cavalry of the American West.

THE BUFFALO SOLDIER is the best kind of Chris Bohjalian novel, a story of a small town and its fundamentally good people trying to overcome the trials of fate and circumstance.

About this edition

• Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0609608339
• ISBN 13: 9780609608333
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416