If a Lion Could Talk

By Mildred Walker

Book Overview

Harriet Ryegate, the proper daughter of Massachusetts Puritans, is the first white woman to go far into the wilderness beyond the upper Missouri. With her husband, a Baptist minister, she seeks to convert the Blackfoot Indians to Christianity. But it is the Ryegates who are changed by their "journey into strangeness." Marcus Ryegate returns to Massachusetts obsessed by a beautiful Indian woman. For sermonizing about her, he pays a heavy price. Harriet, one of Mildred Walker's most fully realized characters, writes in her journal about "the effect of the Wilderness on civilized persons who are accustomed to live in the world of words." If a Lion Could Talk reveals the tragic lack of communication that stretches from Massachusetts to Missouri and beyond in the years before the Civil War--and the appalling heart of darkness that is close to home.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803297785
• ISBN13: 9780803297784
• Release Date: August 1995
• Publisher: Bison Books
• Length: 277 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

genius

I just love this book. You have to read it to appreciate it-I could quack all day, and it would make no difference-just read it....two or three times if possible. It is even more remarkable when taken in the context of the rest of Mildred Walker's work-Ive read most of it, and it all informs the rest. When read chronologically, she is just so amazing. Each book grows and unfolds depth of character. Then this book blows it all wide open. Gender, strength, power, wealth....all of those concepts are entirely mutable in this book. Everything changes before your eyes. If a lion could talk you might not understand what he was saying, but you might understand how he feels.

If a Lion could talk, we could not understand him.

Mildred Walker's depth of characters is incredible. She should be recognized as a leading writer of the mid 20th century."Lion" is the tale of a young minister (Mark) and his wife Harriet who go into the "Wilderness" (capital W) of Montana in the mid 1800's to Christianize the savages. The book opens as they are returning to New England, frustrated and failed, after only a few months. They both felt "alive" in the Wilderness and were rather shocked by its "lure" and both seem bewitched by one incident and person: an Indian woman, wife of the trader, who lives in both worlds (Indian and White) but will not speak English to Mark or Harriet. Mark hopes she will become his interpreter, and a believer, and tries to comfort her when her son dies. She will not speak to him, but is the source of a vision to him. This becomes a fixation, a frustration and a stamp of failure. Using Harriet's pregnancy as an excuse, they leave Montana.Walker's elegant prose floats through the compelling story - I was held tight anticipating what would happen next to this couple who love and hate each other - each having become obsessed with the incident in Montana and the manner in which they see it. Everyone's lives become affected by the Indian Eenisskim: the righteous congregation, the self absorbed Mark, and calm, enduring, way-ahead-of-her-time Harriet. Mark says at one point "it seems I always need interpreters". Beautifully written, full of rich characters, and a most interesting, surprising end.