Richly imagined from historical fact, this is a novel of cultural crossing, as Charging Elk, an Oglala Sioux, joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, journeying from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the back streets of nineteenth-century France. Left behind in Marseille while the show travels on, Charging Elk is forced to remake his life alone ina strage land. He adapts as well as he can, holding on to the memeories and traditions of life on the Plains and eventually falling in love. But none of the worlds the Indian has known can prepare him for the betrayal that follows. At once epic and intimate, The Heartsong of Charging Elk is a triumph of storytelling and the historical imagination that echoes across time, geography, and cultures.