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A review by shelleyanderson4127
Savage Conversations by LeAnne Howe
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Savage Conversations by LeAnne Howe (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is undefinable: is it a play, a novella, a poem? However defined, it is a disturbing, powerful piece of truth telling.
It takes place in the 1870s, in a private mental asylum, where Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of the assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, has been confined. Every night, she claims, the ghost of a Native American warrior comes and cuts her eye lids off with a flint knife.
All of this is recorded history. What Howe's genius has done is to wed this with another historical truth. On December 26, 1862, on President Lincoln's orders, 38 Dakota men were publicly hanged in front of a jeering white mob. It remains the largest mass execution in US history. In another stroke of imaginative power, the noose used to hang the men becomes a character in the work.
Mary Todd Lincoln's hallucination is the result of equal parts of guilt, arrogance and desire, according to Howe. The conversations between Lincoln and the Dakota are difficult and unsettling.
In her excellent introduction Susan Power writes, "There are times when only imagination can save us." Savage Conversations is a work of such saving imagination.
It takes place in the 1870s, in a private mental asylum, where Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of the assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, has been confined. Every night, she claims, the ghost of a Native American warrior comes and cuts her eye lids off with a flint knife.
All of this is recorded history. What Howe's genius has done is to wed this with another historical truth. On December 26, 1862, on President Lincoln's orders, 38 Dakota men were publicly hanged in front of a jeering white mob. It remains the largest mass execution in US history. In another stroke of imaginative power, the noose used to hang the men becomes a character in the work.
Mary Todd Lincoln's hallucination is the result of equal parts of guilt, arrogance and desire, according to Howe. The conversations between Lincoln and the Dakota are difficult and unsettling.
In her excellent introduction Susan Power writes, "There are times when only imagination can save us." Savage Conversations is a work of such saving imagination.