The Healing of Natalie Curtis

by Jane Kirkpatrick

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Classically trained musician Natalie Curtis travels west in 1902 seeking recovery from illness and creative exhaustion. Encounters with Indigenous songs and ceremonies reveal a living musical world threatened by federal regulations that suppress language, dance and religious practice.

Natalie begins documenting music and arguing against the Code of Offenses, eventually appealing to President Theodore Roosevelt. The novel treats preservation as ethically complicated: her Christian and artistic awakening becomes meaningful only when admiration develops into advocacy and when Indigenous communities retain agency over the traditions she records.