The Night the White Deer Died Book

Gary Paulsen's early works differ somewhat from what he produced after his three Newbery Honor books, Dogsong (1986), Hatchet (1988), and The Winter Room (1990). There's an element of pagan spiritualism to many of Gary Paulsen's teen and middle-grade novels, but it was more obvious in his earlier books. The Night the White Deer Died, Tracker, and even Dancing Carl to some extent showed this belief in a Mother Earth watching over us from afar, a deity malleable to whatever traits we desire in our God. Animals and people who live primitively either by choice or necessity are closest to understanding our link to this God, and that's the starting point for comprehending The Night the White Deer Died. Having moved to an arts colony in New Mexico with her mother shortly after her parents' divorce, fifteen-year-old Janet Carson begins dreaming about a young Indian brave stalking a deer in the picturesque New Mexico wilderness. Her recurring dreams ends the same way every time, with the Indian creeping close enough to let fly an arrow toward the heart of its prey, but Janet never sees what happens next. Always she awakens before the arrow strikes true or misses its target, her own heart pounding for reasons beyond any natural ken. What is this vision trying to tell Janet, and what can she do to prepare herself to follow its lead once the dream's mandate becomes evident? A veritable outcast among the predominantly Native American population at school, and ignored for large periods of time by her mother, who's trying to forge her own reputation as a notable sculptor, Janet waits for an incontrovertible sign that her dream is more than a meaningless repeating scene in her head. But when that sign comes, she almost doesn't recognize it.

One day in town, Janet meets a middle-aged Native American named Billy Honcho. Billy's a wino whose first plea to Janet is for a dollar to purchase alcohol, but the fifty-three-year-old catches some hidden corner of Janet's fancy, and she can't get him out of her mind. She sees Billy several times over the proceeding weeks; he's usually drunk, but Janet gently attempts to pry him from the clutches of his vice, growing so bold as to lead him staggering back to her house and prepare coffee and breakfast to restore his sobriety. Janet's mother disapproves of her daughter's hungover friend but doesn't push the issue, just warns her to be wary of Billy. Janet isn't sure why she's taken on the task of straightening Billy out until the words escape her lips in conversation with the Indian before she can quiet them: she loves him, and not like a kid sister idolizes her rebel older brother. Janet's reckless confession ushers in a new stage of her relationship with Billy, who acknowledges her feelings by showing that he's capable of cleaning himself up and presenting an image more appealing than a middle-aged vagrant who can't handle his liquor. He's as striking and handsome as any man his age when he's sober, but it's the midnight ride on Billy's alabaster steed that finally puts him and Janet in a safe place to express their mutual feelings and decide what they mean, what it could conceivably lead to for a man his age to be in love with a teenage girl in 1970s America. Once upon a time, the matter would be simple enough: Billy would perform the traditional Indian wedding rite with her and they'd be joined for life in pagan matrimony, unaffected by the overwrought legalities that have crept into marriage over the centuries. As the virile Indian brave Billy would have been in another era, taking Janet to be his wife would be natural, even expected, but the standards of yesteryear aren't the same as today, where strict social protocol has hedged mankind into narrow definitions of what is acceptable. In contemporary society there is no romantic future for an alcoholic Indian and a girl nearly forty years his junior, and this chasm separates them forever from what they want most. There isn't always justice in the modern order, Janet discovers. Living in an era hostile to the needs of your heart can make you wish you'd never lived at all.

The Night the White Deer Died is written with unabating respect for the diversity of American cultures. The story's wisdom flows not from the author's understanding of the way the world works, but from his awareness of how little he'or any human'knows about the mysteries of existence. When wise words do grace the text, it's a natural trickle of experiential observation, issued with no sense of superiority to Janet or her youthful reckoning of the world. It is unadorned truth to say "all things beautiful are sometimes ugly and that many ugly things are just waiting for beauty to come to them." That is, in effect, a synopsis of The Night the White Deer Died stripped of events and character names, for what is Billy in his squalid dependency on fermented drink but ugliness personified, awaiting the innocent approach of young beauty before proving himself worthy, an old, down-on-his-luck Indian who could have aspired to so much more, and perhaps could still expand to fill that promise? Has his time truly come and gone without remedy? Things change suddenly and unpredictably, but "nothing can ever be good forever and nothing can ever be bad forever", as Janet learns both to her dismay and hope. Desire can't always overcome circumstance, but the love we treasure is ours as long as we refuse to relinquish it. It can be the purest, truest part of us even if forces beyond our control make it impossible for our feelings to ever reach their potential. But that doesn't mean it wasn't love in its best, most noble form.

I'm giving The Night the White Deer Died two and a half stars, and while I've read more complete, meaningful Gary Paulsen novels, this one hit my heart uniquely. Its treatment of love is organic and uncontrived, validating our yearnings that don't conform to the precepts of mainstream society, while offering hope that those yearnings are just as legitimate as anyone else's. That message resonates coming from Gary Paulsen, who never hesitates to deliver straight talk on how things really are. If you like the author's other books from the 1970s and '80s then you'll probably get a lot out of The Night the White Deer Died, which is as valuable for young readers today as when it first saw release in 1978. I hope Gary Paulsen fans stumble onto this obscure favorite and enjoy it for years to come.