The Shadow Catcher

by Marianne Wiggins (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2007

  $3.25

  The Shadow Catcher is a journey through time, a story-within-a-story that seamlessly interweaves the nineteenth-century life of renowned photographer of the Native American peoples Edward S. Curtis with the present-day story of an unlikely father-daughter reunion from beyond the grave. Told in the first person by a fictional character named Marianne Wiggins, the novel begins in Los Angeles, where Hollywood is in pursuit of the manuscript for The Shadow Catcher, about the photographer's self-proclaimed mission to document a vanishing race. 'This is the perfect project', the film producers gush. 'It's got the outdoors. It's got adventure. It's got the do-good element.' This surface reading of Curtis's biography (the one popularly held today) sets in motion a journey into the American past, where his complex emotional life bore no resemblance to his esteemed public reputation as servant to his nation. In reality, the artist was an absent husband and disappearing father. This is where Marianne's father, John Wiggins, comes in.Fuelled by the great American passions for love and land and family, The Shadow Catcher chases the silhouettes of our collective history into the bright light of the present.

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.25

  THE SHADOW CATCHER dramatically inhabits the space where past and present intersect, seamlessly interweaving narratives from two different eras: the first fraught passion between turn-of-the-twentieth-century icon Edward Curtis (1868-1952) and his muse-wife, Clara; and a twenty-first-century journey of redemption. Narrated in the first person by a reimagined writer named Marianne Wiggins, the novel begins in Hollywood, where top producers are eager to sentimentalize the complicated life of Edward Curtis as a sunny biopic: It's got the outdoors. It's got adventure. It's got the do-good element. Yet, contrary to Curtis's esteemed public reputation as servant to his nation, the artist was an absent husband and disappearing father. Jump to the next generation, when Marianne's own father, John Wiggins (1920-1970), would live and die in equal thrall to the impulse of wanderlust. Were the two men running from or running to? Dodging the false beacons of memory and legend, Marianne amasses disparate clues - photographs and hospital records, newspaper clippings and a rare white turquoise bracelet - to recover those moments that went unrecorded, to hear the words only the silent ones can speak.

• New

  Paperback
  2008

  $19.28

  THE SHADOW CATCHER dramatically inhabits the space where past and present intersect, seamlessly interweaving narratives from two different eras: the first fraught passion between turn-of-the-twentieth-century icon Edward Curtis (1868-1952) and his muse-wife, Clara; and a twenty-first-century journey of redemption. Narrated in the first person by a reimagined writer named Marianne Wiggins, the novel begins in Hollywood, where top producers are eager to sentimentalize the complicated life of Edward Curtis as a sunny biopic: It's got the outdoors. It's got adventure. It's got the do-good element. Yet, contrary to Curtis's esteemed public reputation as servant to his nation, the artist was an absent husband and disappearing father. Jump to the next generation, when Marianne's own father, John Wiggins (1920-1970), would live and die in equal thrall to the impulse of wanderlust. Were the two men running from or running to? Dodging the false beacons of memory and legend, Marianne amasses disparate clues - photographs and hospital records, newspaper clippings and a rare white turquoise bracelet - to recover those moments that went unrecorded, to hear the words only the silent ones can speak.