White Buffalo Gold

by Adam G. Fleming

Ever since the sixth grade, Emily Zimmerman hasn't stopped looking for traces of gold in the river that runs through her hometown, the site of a minor gold rush in the late 1800s.

Geologist Owen Thibodeaux doesn't believe there ever was gold along Nebraska's South Loup River, so he visits the little town of Harmony to try to find hard evidence of it. The little community has a settled spirit that soothes him, so he makes it his home.

When Emily takes a job at the local nursing home, she encounters Owen, whose rich baritone voice tells incomplete stories about a small stone from Nova Scotia and the Rock of Gibraltar. Owen's tales stir Emily's imagination, and she determines to help Owen, now blind, re-envision his whole story.

Includes the story lines of a gold strike mystery and a spirit buffalo.

Spanning the USA from New York to Alaska and exploring our history for 130 years, but grounded in the Heartland in the year 1992, Fleming's most important artistic work to date pits life against death and finds hope in both. This novel is a deeply spiritual and satisfying read.

Comparable to a blend of the midwestern humor and expansive cast of small-town characters of Garrison Keillor and the darkness, poignancy, and depth of John Irving.

308 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2012

About the author

Adam Fleming was raised in the tiny towns of Tiskilwa, Ill.; Wembo Nyama, Zaire; and Wellman, Iowa. The author is a longtime resident of Goshen, Indiana, together with his wife and four children.

Reviews

[midnightfaerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

White Buffalo Gold by Adam G. Fleming has a myriad of personalities and plotlines that come together to form a beautiful story about a little town named Harmony, Nebraska. A bright high school student who just graduated named, Emily, decides to stay home in her town. Emily is haunted by the stories of the gold found in Harmony years ago. Although this is the basic premise of the story, there is so much more to this beguiling book then the description on the back cover. The characters come alive with astounding detail, so much so, that you can see the spittle on the corner of the mouth of the aging man in the olden home. The people are so vibrant and colorful, that they're easy to remember.

The book jumps around a lot between characters and time periods, chronicling the lives of all involved with the tale. Usually I find this confusing, but Fleming does an extremely good job of it, making sure the characters are so memorable they are very easy to follow through time, getting a comprehensive view of their life and how it fits in. I really enjoyed the diversity of the characters as well, from a Sioux prophet to a forgetful professor who all hold keys to the mystery that unlocks Emily's indecision of action. My two favorite characters were Professor Owen Thibodeaux, a man in an Olden home who could only remember bits and pieces of his life, and Paul, a young man who worked there with a proclivity to keeping a diary of obituaries who's main goal was to save money so he could get out of town.

I think the only thing I didn't like about the book was the repetition of certain phrases the elderly people would say. The iteration might have helped with the ease of remembering the individual, however, it seemed a bit much at times, and I'm not sure the overuse was always necessary. Other than that, I really enjoyed this book. There were times I was at the edge of my seat where I thought it unusual to be, considering where I was in the book. Almost as if I wasn't sure Fleming was trying to be suspenseful. Like when Arnold was on his way home from Alaska to see the other family of his that he hadn't seen in years and to finally face the white buffalo of his dreams, I couldn't wait to see what would happen, or the night the club incident occurred while Amy was on the job, who, by the way, was another strong disposition of a character I highly admired. Much in the tradition of the movie Love Actually or Crash, you have a multitude of varied story lines and personalities that go through their individual trials of life, only to all come together delightfully like puzzle pieces with a common picture in the end. Fleming is an author to watch, with intricate methods of character writing and a style reminiscent of Betty Smith in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, in the manner of which she writes historical fiction, with a hint of Joseph Conrad's ability for creating memorable characters thrown in, he creates a unique approach all his own. I look forward to reading his next novel.

ClassicsDefined.com

[Lindsey Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

White Buffalo Gold follows the lives of three girls as they come of age in a rural town. Amy, Emily, and Melissa share a long history together. Through the novel you see that history laid out through several decades. You see how complex friendship can be, and the many faces people may wear as friends, but Adam dares to go deeper. You see those three girl’s lives intertwined with other souls in the town and you see the interweaving of those souls as well. Some people seem like the stereotypical “decent folks”. Other people betray the complexity of life through their actions, both good and bad. Adam writes about how easy mistakes can be and how the repercussions can last throughout a lifetime. Yet what resonates is not that there are “good” and “bad” people, but that we are more than the sum of what we do.

What I love the most about this novel is it’s honesty. It never feels contrived, even when the spirit of a white buffalo starts haunting someone. The characters all play out as very genuine, and the greater themes of small town identity, regret, aging, death, and starting over all get a fair shake. You’ve got small town Nebraska, a gold rush mystery, and Native American spirituality all weaving into a coming of age story about the choices that make us leave and the choices that keep us close. When I finished reading the novel I felt as if I’d just had tea with old friends and neighbors I hadn’t seen in a while, and I was so glad to have caught up on their lives.

If you like contemporary fiction that harks back to some of the great American narrative traditions, then this book is one you’ll enjoy reading. It’s got small towns, rural America, big potential and simple dreams: all the Americana with none of the pretense or cloying sweetness that can make the genre turn sour.

[Margret Melissa (ladybug) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. The small town dynamics and the feelings of isolation and hopelessness they can produce are spot on. I was cheering for the characters to succeed in leaving and succeed in life. Even though I didn't agree with some of their decisions, I can say they were their decisions to make and at least they made them instead of letting things happen to them. :D Not everyone was "good" and not everyone was "bad". That is real life.

[Bekki Fahrer · Rating 4 out of 5]

About 2 years ago I was in a live reading of a play by Adam Flemming entitled A Pebble Among Rocks. I thoroughly enjoyed the process, partly because I missed the stage, and partly because the play was really good. I really loved my character, even though she was an 18 -year-old Nurses Aide named Emily. There were lots of things we had in common, being a nurses aide shortly after High School, having lots of "potential" and little direction, and being perpetually late. I pretty much teared up every time Emily had her explosion. I so understood what she was saying. When Adam sat down to write the story into a novel I was very excited. Here was the opportunity to flesh out the back story, to give history to so many asides mentioned in the play. I was also rather trepidatious. The play was good, Adam had talent, but what if the novel just was mediocre?

I'm happy to say that my fear was unnecessary. Pebble transitioned nicely into novelized form. While there are a couple of things that I would change or reword, it's no more than I would critique on the published novels I read on a regular basis. I actually found this story compelling and was sucked in, despite the fact that I knew a lot about the story, and recognised many scenes that were taken verbatim from the play. I enjoyed the injection of the search for gold in the town, and liked the interweaving of this, and the white Buffalo myth, through everyone's characters. The old guys in the nursing home, Doc, Owen, Reverend Miller, the Prodigal son Arnie, and Emily all connected in some way with the towns founding charlatan and his Native American wife. It was great meeting old friends, and also learn more about who they were. I could hear the voices of my fellow actors echoing while I read. "Motheeeerrr" and "Ass-backwards" and that oh so poignant moment where Owen talks about his rock, and the Reverend quotes the Psalm while dying.

This story is one I will recommend. Flemming created a world that seems to be so familiar, and yet full of surprises. Ben's story, Arnie's experience, Amy and Emily's unexpected alliance at the end brought a good sense of eucatastrophe that the play didn't contain, and I was glad to see it. Part of me would argue that the ending was a little too neat, but the side of me that grew to love these characters was glad for the way it wove together and brought redemption and hope. (It wasn't all neat though. There was a share of unresolved situations, Phil's story broke my heart, and the fact that Doc never really got closure or free from his failings made me sad too)

The only thing I found lacking in the novel was my favorite line from the play. Emily's comment that she was afraid that she was going to be so perpetually late her whole life that she would figure out exactly what she was meant to do about two minutes after her life was over. I loved saying that line, and was looking forward to reading it, and then....it wasn't there. I'm sure I'm the only one who missed it. Emily's explosion is so properly awkward and real. I just loved that line, and wanted to see it again.

So. 4 stars from me. It's good stuff.

[Ryan Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

White Buffalo Gold is an engaging character study, as much as anything else. Actually, I should call it a characters study. The story is told mostly in dialogue, which allows the characters to speak for themselves. There are so many characters, and so many stories given equal weight, that I had a hard time parceling out my emotional investment in particular characters. I did invest, though, and would like to read more.

In some ways, this reminded me of an ensemble movie, with lots of actors chewing the scenery and multiple plot lines jumbling together. Some of Adam's plot lines fit perfectly, while some seemed not to get the attention they deserved. I'd love a fuller exploration of Arnie, of Ben, of Doc, and of Paul and Tony's front- and backstories. I'd love explanations for Ben's roommate's pretend (?) relationship in NYC, for why Emily feels the need to be perfect, and for Amy's thought process before she took her job.

To me, this felt like a book about Emily, Amy, Owen and Doc. The other characters could have popped in and out of the threads of these three without a hitch, and without needing extensive attention. And I'm still interested in more about Doc and Arnie, especially--more about the background of the buffalo and how she affected Doc and Arnie along the way. In fact, I'd have been fine with just those four characters, I think, because I'm very interested in learning more about those four. It's a tribute to Adam's writing that I felt like there were too many characters in the book because I did not feel like I could learn enough about each of those characters while I was reading.

I'll wait for the sequel to find out more about the Milanos--perhaps there will be a new connection in Morocco, or in Denver.

[Kelly Hager · Rating 4 out of 5]

I try not to use the Goodreads summary unless it's part of a series or a mystery novel, and this is neither. But I didn't want to spoil anything about this experience, because a big part of the joy is in seeing how everything comes together.

There are multiple narrators but the two main ones are Owen Thibodeaux and Emily Zimmerman. I liked Emily immediately, but it took me a little bit to warm up to Owen (basically that happened once their paths crossed at Emily's job).

This is another one of those books that I wouldn't have known about except that the author is a friend of a friend (so thank you, Lindsey, for bringing this book to my attention!) and that would've been very sad indeed because this novel is really good. I don't want to get maudlin here, but this is one of those books that actually SAYS SOMETHING, you know? But it's also an incredibly fun read. It's rare when those two things combine.

Highly recommended.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

One distracting element to the writing was that the point of view changed so often to the point where I felt I was just trying to keep the plot line together in my head. I liked the way everything came together in the end and enjoyed the small town feel of the characters, with social and spiritual lives...a point of view that is missing from much of main stream writing.