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    The Buffalo Soldier
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    The Buffalo Soldier
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    The Buffalo Soldier
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Buffalo Soldier

    Written by Chris Bohjalian

    Narrated by Alison Fraser

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Midwives and Trans-Sister Radio comes a hauntingly beautiful story of the ties that bind families-and the strains that pull them apart.


    In northern Vermont, a raging river overflows its banks and sweeps the nine-year-old twin daughters of Terry and Laura Sheldon to their deaths. In the aftermath of the tragedy, the highway patrolman and his wife, unable to have more children, take in a foster child: a ten-year-old African-American boy who has been shuttled for years between foster families and group homes. Young Alfred cautiously enters the Sheldon family circle, barely willing to hope that he might find a permanent home among these kind people still distracted by grief.

    Across the street from the Sheldons live an older couple who take Alfred under their wing, and it is they who introduce him to the history of the buffalo soldiers-African-American cavalry troopers whose reputation for integrity, honor, and personal responsibility inspires the child.

    Before life has a chance to settle down, however, Terry, who has never been unfaithful to Laura, finds himself attracted to the solace offered by another woman. Their encounter, brief as it is, leaves her pregnant with his baby-a child Terry suddenly realizes he urgently wants.

    From these fitful lives emerges a lyrical and richly textured story, one that explores the meaning of marriage, the bonds between parents and children, and the relationships that cause a community to become a family. But The Buffalo Soldier is also a tale of breathtaking power and profound moral complexity-and exactly the sort of novel readers have come to expect from Chris Bohjalian.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMar 5, 2002
    ISBN9780553755527
    Unavailable
    The Buffalo Soldier
    Author

    Chris Bohjalian

    Chris Bohjalian is the author of twelve novels, including the New York Times bestsellers, Secrets of Eden, The Double Bind, Skeletons at the Feast, and Midwives.  His work has been translated into twenty-six languages.  He lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.   Visit him at www.chrisbohjalian.com or www.facebook.com .

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    Reviews for The Buffalo Soldier

    3.5/5

    256 ratings14 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Terry and Laura suffer a tragic loss when their twin daughters are killed in a flash flood. Two years later they decide to become foster parents to Alfred a veteran of the foster care system and black.While Alfred struggles to adapt to his primarily white community Terry and Laura address their ongoing grief in widely divergent ways. Alfred’s life begins to change when he’s befriended by Paul, an elderly neighbor who educat3d him on the Buffalo Soldiers, a group of well respected black cavalry men that existed during the days of the old West. This is a beutiful story of life after loss with its roller coaster ride of emotions. It’s also about the challenges in creating a family with adjustments, misunderstandings and ultimately resolutions.
    • 5/5
      Chris Bohjalian is one of my current favorite authors. I really enjoyed this read and appreciated the integration of the history of Buffalo soldiers with the text. I liked the shifting character perspectives. The characters seemed multi-faceted and relatively realistic. The ten-year-old seemed a bit unrealistically mature for his age, but wasn't annoying precocious. I felt that the book's treatment of grief was very nuanced and its attention to Vermont-based geographic detail was well integrated into the plot.
    • 4/5
      Another great story! Well researched and so informative it reads like non-fiction.

      There are two elements of Chris Bohjalian's writing that I absolutely enjoy: his characters are so well-developed that you feel you know them; and the dialogue is so well-written that you feel you can actually hear the voices of the characters.
    • 4/5
      In "The Buffalo Soldier", author Chris Bohjalian gives the reader two stories for the price of one: the first story being that of Terry and Laura Sheldon and their foster child Alfred, and the second being the story of George Rowe, "the buffalo soldier." Just as the circumstances and emotions surrounding the Sheldon girls' tragic deaths is a constant theme throughout the novel, so is the story of the buffalo soldiers. Perhaps it was because I listened to this novel on audio, but it is not apparent at first how the two stories are symbolically connected - and at times (again, possibly due to the audio format), the quotes from Rowe seemed to be distracting from the story itself.

      The weather, the cold, and the presence of water (in all its forms - rain, the river, etc.) are also key symbolic elements that are an integral part of this novel. It is set in late fall and winter, so the Vermont landscape is often depicted as very cold and gloomy. Such is also the case for the marriage of Terry and Laura Sheldon following the deaths of their daughters. The reader isn't given much of a glimpse into the Sheldons' marriage prior to this incident, but understandably so, the couple deals with their emotions to their shared tragedy in separate ways. Bohjalian portrays the emotions experienced by the wife, Laura, extremely well; his portrayal of 10-year Alfred is also exceptionally well-done.

      Much of the writing in "The Buffalo Soldier" is well-done. Bohjalian shines in his descriptions of the landscape, and the interactions between Laura and Alfred as well as Alfred and the retired college professor and his wife who live across the street, are beautifully brought to life. I did not care much for Terry or Phoebe, which may have been the reaction that Bohjalian hoped to arose in his readers. The story does fall short in its ending. The drama that fills the climatic scenes in the book are believable, but the resolution of the conflict in the story absolutely is not. It's wrapped up hastily (as if there was a page limit that was foisted upon the author) and too neatly - a little too "movie-of-the-week"-ish. With all the complexities that each character carries, they - and the reader - needed something more. Overall, I liked the novel and will certainly read more of Bohjalian's work as he is a talented writer.
    • 5/5
      Terry and Laura Sheldon's lives get turned upside-down when their twin girls die in a flash flood. Their marriage is brittle as they invite a foster child into their home. Alfred is a 10 year-old African-American boy, who has been shuffled from foster home to foster home and can't trust that he may be here to stay. Enter kind elderly neighbors next door, who teach Alfred about the Buffalo Soldiers from the Civil War who were known for the honesty and integrity which inspires the child.The plot has several important twists that further affect them all. Beautifully written and evocative, Bohajlian deals with the question of what makes a family? Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      This was my first Chris Bohjalian book - I really liked it and would definitely read another book authored by him. A great story.
    • 4/5
      Terry and Laura Sheldon are grieving over the death of their twin daughters in a flash flood and it's a strain on their marriage. They decide to foster a 10 year old African American boy. Laura and Alfred begin to bond, but Terry can't seem to relate to him. Terry has a love affair which threatens to destroy their marriage. Neighbors of the Sheldons, Alice and Paul Hebert, are drawn to Alfred and Paul gives him a book about the Buffalo Soldiers, an African American Army regiment during the Civil War.Buffalo Soldier is a fascinating read. The characters are well-drawn and believable. Every chapter ends with a passage from the journal of a real Buffalo Soldier and those passages help the reader learn more about the history of the regiment, but they also parallel what is going on in Alfred's life. Laura, Alfred, Alice and Paul are strong likable characters, but I didn't like Terry very well. The book was intriguing all the way through, but the ending seemed a little rushed, as if the author tired of telling the story and just wanted it to end. The ending also seemed a little "pat. Other than that, I highly recommend "Buffalo Soldier.
    • 5/5
      This is one of the VERY BEST, most wonderful, books I have ever read - LOVED IT! Chris Bohjalian has never yet failed to transfer me immediately into the mind of his characters, and the people in this book are some of the most sympathetic.
    • 4/5
      Lots of wounded people, who somehow face a crisis and emerge better, stronger, happier. Alfred, the African-American foster child is not quite believable, yet extremely likable. I was rooting for him throughout the novel. Also loved Laura and her willingness to pick up the pieces of her life after her twin daughters drown. The horse Mesa is a huge plus.
    • 4/5
      This was a story that seems unlikely, but for that very reason tends to ring true. We have all heard of tragedies that seem almost overwhelming in other families, situations so dreadful that no author could imagine them. Bohjalian does. This is a story of a family tragedy that becomes a life changing, and loving situation for a boy that starts out as a stranger and becomes a son. Twin daughters are swept away in a flood in the first pages. The town rallies to console the family in the early days, but as is true in real situation of this sort, support falls away as people realize that there is nothing that they can do to assuage the grief following such loss. This family finds its way out of darkness into the light and in doing so, the lives of an elderly neighbor and a young foster child are changed along with theirs. The ending is absolutely heart stopping, and was for me, unexpected. This is a compelling read with all too real characters. It is a can't put it down book, like all of Bohjalian's books.
    • 3/5
      The story of a troubled African-American boy adopted by a grieving white couple in small-town New York, The Buffalo Soldier holds the potential for emotionally resonant plot. Unfortunately, Bohjalian's book splits off in too many directions, examining the stories of the foster child, his adoptive parents, their relationships with one another, their elderly neighbors... The core story is a good one, but there are just too many diversions.
    • 3/5
      Black foster child dropped into lily white Vermont family still recovering from a horrible tragedy. The child and parents help each other through.
    • 4/5
      The blurb was off-putting, but I am reading from the bottom of my TBR pile, and I was pleasantly surprised. Nothing earth shattering, but a decent read.
    • 4/5
      THE BUFFALO SOLDIER is good, as are all of Chris Bohjalian's books. But most of them go beyond good; some are even fabulous. This one is just good.It’s a pretty simple story, really, starting with the death of Laura‘s and Terry‘s twin daughters. Their grief is immense, even after 2 years. Then they become foster parents to a 10-year-old boy, Alfred. Their neighbors give Alfred a book about the buffalo soldiers.This story is about Laura‘s and Terry‘s marriage, their feelings for their foster son, and their foster son’s feelings for them. Saying more than that would be giving too much away.Unlike most author's books, Bohjalian’s are both plot- and character-driven, not just one or the other. That’s why he is one of my favorite authors. But I expected more of this book and, so, was disappointed. Believe me, though, it really is good, especially the scene when Alfred rides the horse into the village when the weather has caused mass flooding. THE BUFFALO SOLDIER won’t be a waste of your time.My only specific criticism of this book is it lack of quotation marks. Why do authors do that? Quotation marks make a book more readable. Therefore, not using them is a disregard for your reader.