Ned Giles, a teenager who is orphaned when his father commits suicide during the Great Depression heads West hoping to start a new adventure. Ned joins the 1932 Great Apache Expedition in Douglas Arizona. The Expedition is traveling into the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico to free the kidnapped son of a wealthy Mexican landowner. The Expedition is made up of wealthy men who have paid for this adventure, including Tolley Phillips, a gay man who hires his own English valet. It also includes Margaret, a young anthropologist from the University of Arizona, and two Apaches scouts, Joseph Valor and his grandson, Albert. When a captured Apache girl escapes this leads this small band of friends to find her and use her as a ransom for the Mexican boy. This novel is based on historical fact as was his previous novel 1,000 White Women. Fergus brings us rich characters, incredibly vivid scenery and insightful journey into the Indian struggle with "White Eyes".
How Jim Fergus came across the idea for "Wild Girl"
Fergus was traveling in Mexico. In the village of Casas Grandes in the state of Chihuahua, he met an old man who told him the story of a young Apache girl they called la ni-a bronca, who had been treed in the mountains by the hound dogs of an American mountain-lion hunter in 1932. He didn't know what to do with her, so he brought her into town. She was so wild that she tried to bite anyone who touched her, so they tossed her into jail. Apaches played a sort of mythic part in the beliefs of the Mexican populace, and there were a lot of people who came to see her out of sheer curiosity. So many that the sheriff was able to charge admission, and the old man, at the time a young boy was among those who paid to see her. He confessed his story with shame to Fergus. And he would not say what happened to the girl. Fergus concludes, "I couldn’t get the story of la ni-a bronca out of my mind, and I knew I had to find out for myself what happened to her. In this way the novel was born." Thus proving that sometimes, seeing how sausage is made is actually appetizing. And that history need not be dry or matter of fact.
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Discussion Questions
1. Who was you favorite character?
2. Did the character of Tolley, a vocal, flamboyant homosexual, surprise you considering the time period of the 1930's?
3. Did you feel that Ned and the Wild Girl relationship ended with the right choice?
4. How sympathetic toward Joseph/Goso where you when you found out what his role was in capturing Charlie?
5. Considering this book was written in the perspective of a man and 1,000 White Women was written in the perspective of a women, which was more believable? Which did you like better?
Posts
Grace is the story of a young runaway girl and the boy who hides her from a frightening world too large and unfathomable for him to comprehend. It is also about two brothers and the love that binds them together through difficult times. In some ways this is the most autobiographical of all my novels. When I was eight-years-old my father lost his job and we moved from our beautiful home in California to a rundown, rat-infested home in a poor neighborhood, like the one I describe in the story. Most of all, Grace is a story of a young couple learning to love. 
Ned Giles, a teenager who is orphaned when his father commits suicide during the Great Depression heads West hoping to start a new adventure. Ned joins the 1932 Great Apache Expedition in Douglas Arizona. The Expedition is traveling into the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico to free the kidnapped son of a wealthy Mexican landowner. The Expedition is made up of wealthy men who have paid for this adventure, including Tolley Phillips, a gay man who hires his own English valet. It also includes Margaret, a young anthropologist from the University of Arizona, and two Apaches scouts, Joseph Valor and his grandson, Albert. When a captured Apache girl escapes this leads this small band of friends to find her and use her as a ransom for the Mexican boy. This novel is based on historical fact as was his previous novel 1,000 White Women. Fergus brings us rich characters, incredibly vivid scenery and insightful journey into the Indian struggle with "White Eyes".
