Buy The Book! About the Author For more than two decades, Alan Cheuse has served as NPR’s ‘voice of books.’ He is the author of three novels, including The Grandmothers’ Club and The Light Possessed, several collections of short stories, and a pair of novellas recently published in The Fires. He is also the editor of Seeing Ourselves: Great Early American Short Stories and co-editor of Writers Workshop in a Book.

Reading Group Guide

What is the price of our dreams?

Beginning in the late 1890s, Edward Sheriff Curtis undertook the seemingly overwhelming odyssey of capturing the past, of documenting and photographing the fading way of life of the American Indian.

In To Catch the Lightning, Alan Cheuse has created a remarkable portrait of the man who would become a legend. Drawn on his epic journey by a series of female muses, Curtis turns his lens on a landscape of unparalleled beauty and tradition. Curtis' desire to complete his destiny as foretold by Chief Joseph, to photograph all of the hundreds of western American Indian tribes, is a haunting tale of the struggle between ambition and duty.

1. In the prologue, Myers describes America at the turn of the century as, “a land large enough to hold past and future in a single moment.” He goes on to say, “Oh, America, where someone steeped in Homer and the tragedians could turn what little talent he had toward the trivialities of the present and hope to find in them some longer and deeper meaning!” Do you think this is a naive point of view? Would Myers have said the same thing after his journeys with Curtis? How do you think his idea that the past, present and future are so rigidly separated might have been altered?

2. The Clam-Digging Woman is an important fixture throughout the story; she is present, at least in spirit, for many of the crucial crossroads both Edward and Jimmy Fly-Wing come to in their lives. What does she represent? How is she different for each man? Is she pushing them toward or away from something? 

3. Edward describes himself by saying: “I’m a rationalist, a kind of scientist as much as artist; all photographers have to be both, I think.” Do you think he’ is governed by rationality? What parts of his life are art, and what parts are science? Is he true to either discipline, or to something else entirely? 

4. Tasáwiche, the daughter of the chief of the Havasupai tribe, who live at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, is a powerful muse to Edward. What does she represent? How is she similar to and different from the other women in Edward’s life? What does the end of her life mean to Edward’s project? 

5. After Edward makes the portrait of Teddy Roosevelt’s children, as Roosevelt is discussing his idea that the Native Americans are savages, he says, “Each man looks and sees what he takes to be the main part of things. I know that I do so, and find myself mostly correct. But I could be wrong about these people.” How does that statement also apply to the way that Edward thinks about the Native Americans? As his time among them continues, how does Edward’s idealized view change? In what other areas of his life does this black and white, absolute view of things obscure the truth?

6. What is the meaning of Jimmy Fly-Wing’s vision in Chapter 9? What is the author suggesting by including symbols from Jimmy’s two different lives: riding with dead warriors and avenging his father, versus being told he will meet Curtis and the discovery of the “white road?” When the vision culminates with the death of the bear, what does that mean about these separate lives? Is he making a choice?

7. Miss Greene is a surprising woman for Edward to become emotionally involved with; neither an Indian nor his wife. What attracts him to her? What does she represent to him? What does she ultimately teach him?

8. What do you think of Jimmy comparing the Indians to the Sumerians and Canaanites in the Bible? How does that fit in with Jimmy and John Willoughby’s theory of the “visible invisibility” of the Indian and the black man? Is this a state current to the time in which the book is set, or one that has always been? Does it continue?

9. In what ways are Jimmy and Edward spiritual brothers? Each man left behind his way of life to help preserve the past; what other parallels are there in their lives? Is Myers part of this spirituality, or is he something else?

10. Myers describes their project by saying, “The errors--that is just the cost of employing memory, the foundation of storytelling, which, by its very nature, changes and shapes the facts into something larger than just one thing happening after another. Telling one thing after another is chronicling; shaping and forming belongs to history and poetry. Memory is about the shape of things we see as we look back. Aristotle says in his Poetics that history is a record of what happened, and poetry is a record of what ought to have happened, and in writing this story so far, I have to say that the distance between the two seems to grow more and more narrow by the word.” Do you think Edward, Jimmy and Myers have created a history of the Indians, or is it poetry? Are their errors really a fault of employing their memories to write the story? Or are the faults because they are using the dying memories of a faltering people? Is it a function of trying to codify the stories of an oral history tradition?

11. Edward recounts the story of the Sun Dance while Hal is deathly sick with fever. In the dance, the warriors are called upon to sacrifice a part of their bodies to the gods. What has Edward sacrificed? Do you think sacrifice is always a necessary part of connecting with the gods? Is sacrifice always necessary to fulfill your destiny? If there were no sacrifice in Edward’s story, would there be reward? 

12. Clara has both a profound fear and a deep love for the water she lives so near. “I love the water, I watch the water, I hate the water, it fills me up, fills my mind, makes me feel as though I will remain as overwhelmed as I am now with despair for my marriage…”
How does the Sound mirror what she feels for Edward? Why, at the end of her life, does she choose to surrender to the sea?

13. When Myers tells Edward that he has renewed his replationship with his Penelope, Edward replies that he understands if Myers chooses “a good life and a good wife” over the project. Do you think Edward really means that? Is it really a choice between a calling and a “regular” life? Could Edward have made a different decision? What might his life have been like?

14. What is the significance of Edward, Beth, Myers and Jimmy destroying the glass plates at the studio? Why is Beth involved? How do you think Jimmy felt, watching so many images of his kinsmen be destroyed after just delaring his understanding of the need for preservation? Why does he remain so loyal to Edward?

15. On their trip to see the last tribes, Edward says about himself, “He always put forward the picture of the Indian as whole and good and handsome and beautiful. As they once were, if not now. And if his photographs made them look more noble than most of them are, then at least they—all of them, like all of us—will have a glimpse of how things might have been.” Is this a fair statement? How much of Edward’s record of the Indians and their way of life was influenced by his romanticism of it, his single-minded devotion to the cause? Is it a good or bad thing?

16. The story of Clara’s death concludes with, “As always, as in any life, except that you don’t know it until you live it—and no art, neither stories nor novels nor paintings nor photographs nor statues nor dances nor poems can convince you—you find yourself closer to the end than to the beginning, and the end begins.” How does this apply to Clara’s life and death? How does it apply to Edward’s project? The Indians themselves?

17. What does the ending of the novel mean? Where has Edward gone? What are these worlds upon worlds? How much, if any, influence do you think his Christian upbringing may have had on this vision and reunion with his loved ones? Do you think Jimmy Fly-Wing is alive or dead when they meet here?

18. How is this story both timeless and firmly entrenched in time? The end of the nineteenth century through the beginning of the twentieth was a time of great upheaval and change in America. How did those things affect Edward and his work? Why do some of the major events—the Great Depression, the World Wars, the changes in technology—have so little effect?

19. Do you think that Edward is ultimately a good man? Were the years he spent away from his wife and children worth his record of a dying people? Do you believe he was divinely called to perform this task?