Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography - Winner
of the Society of American Historians Francis Parkman Prize - Winner of
the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Western Biography - A
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
Named One of the Best Books of the Year by True West (Best Biography)
and The Boston Globe
Black Elk is the definitive biographical account of a figure whose
dramatic life converged with some of the most momentous events in the
history of the American West. Born in an era of rising violence between
the Sioux, white settlers, and U.S. government troops, Black Elk killed
his first man at the Little Bighorn, witnessed the death of his second
cousin Crazy Horse, and traveled to Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West
show. Upon his return, he was swept up in the traditionalist Ghost Dance
movement and shaken by the Massacre at Wounded Knee. But Black Elk was
not a warrior, instead accepting the path of a healer and holy man,
motivated by a powerful prophetic vision that he struggled to
understand.
In Black Elk, Joe Jackson has crafted a true American epic, restoring
to its subject the richness of his times and gorgeously portraying a
life of heroism and tragedy, adaptation and endurance, in an era of
permanent crisis on the Great Plains.
