Here’s my second book for Novellas in November. Bess is 10 when her widowed father, Cy Bellman, decides to go west. He has read an article about the discoveries in Kentucky of the bones of massive animals. What if they are still alive in the vast West? Maybe Lewis and Clark didn’t see them, but what if he took “excursions” from their path? His brain is afire with excitement. He converts most of his money into trinkets for the natives and leaves Bess with her Aunt Julie.
While Bellman is bumbling around, Bess is waiting, sure he will return in two years, as he promised. Out West, Bellman has hired a 17-year-old Native American, a skinny boy named Old Woman From a Distance, as an assistant. They never learn each other’s language. Cy seems unable to drop his obsession.
As time passes and Bess nears her teens, two local pedophiles have their eyes on her.
This little novel leads you on in a subtle way so that you don’t feel you can stop. I found the ending a tad abrupt and unsatisfying, but overall, once you start it, you won’t be able to stop.
I enjoyed this too, but I think I preferred her other novella Clear.