Title: The Audacity of Patience Levi
Author: Billie Bierer
Publisher: Telemachus Press
ISBN: 978-1-937698-64-5
Pages: 276, Paperback/Kindle
Genre: Historical Fiction
Reviewed by: Andrew Mayer, Pacific Book Review
Book Review
Billie Bierer has written an ambitious novel based on many of the basic historical premises of American history in the 19th century: slavery; interracial relationships; treatment of blacks, especially women, in the South and Southwest, post-Civil War; Federal versus Indian strife and warfare; buffalo soldiers– black men, some former slaves; and outlaws.Her heroine, Patience Levi, is shown first as a young black girl of fifteen in Last Chance, Georgia after the Civil War, in the care of her grandmother, known to her as Grandmammy. Little is said of her mother, except for some poignant scenes where Patience is abused by white men, and her mother fails to defend her. Grandmammy encourages her to leave the domestic life and join a wagon of blacks going West on the “wagon trail.” The wagon is attacked by Indians, and most are killed. This forces Patience to decide to take the clothing of a dead buffalo soldier, Pvt. Jeremiah Jones, and his identity, and join the federal troops fighting the Indians in the Southwest. Despite being “found out” by Pvt. Tigway Burrell, she keeps her secret and poses as a black man.
Billie Bierer creates an adventurous tableau in a series of events dealing with intercultural, interracial and sexual relations involving Patience and people she meets in her “secret identity” as a buffalo soldier. Some involve other characters such as Calamity Jane, Tommy Jo Sanchez and Henry James. Others are based on real life characters of the period in the Southwest such as Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, the Hole in the Wall Gang and mentions of other historical personages such as Wild Bill Hickok and Doc Holliday. During these scenes, it is apparent Patience has to grow up in harsh circumstances and Bierer makes her go through emotional hoops in learning to live with Tommy Jo Sanchez and the husband she rescues, Henry James, who themselves are engaged in an interracial marriage: Mexican and black. Eventually, Patience marries a black man who is a blacksmith, Thad Rutledge, and “rescues” two black children from indentured servitude in the mines and prostitution.
Bierer also adopts a writing style that showcases much of the problem of the post-Civil War 19th century America. Serious questions evolve regarding life and liberty in the Wild West. It appears interracial relations are somewhat more tolerable there than in Georgia and the South in the 1870s-1890s period under scrutiny. Slavery has been abolished, so blacks are allowed a greater “role” in daily living. Further, there is less discrimination shown in male-female relations: black-white; black-Spanish; white-Spanish. Economically, there are definitely different scales- but blacks, Moreso men, seem to be able to make a better living out West than in Civil War days. Women like Patience, however, felt the need to disguise their identity and “pretend” they were men to succeed beyond traditional wife/domestic levels.
In the end, the reader is able to believe the storyline. It is possible someone like Patience Levi could have escaped the dismal life of post-Civil War Georgia and “taken on” a new identity in the West. There was more freedom there, but it was also a very dangerous place. One needed to know how to use knives, guns and rifles, how to ride horses and how to stand up to outlaws and thieves, as well as fellow soldiers. Patience Levi was a unique, but real, character who indeed likely existed somewhere in the American Southwest in the late 19th-century, and Billie Bierer is to be commended for creating her for the enjoyment of general fiction readers.
The Audacity of Patience Levi by Billie Bierer is a well written and descriptive book that brings the reader back in time to the post-Civil War. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good historic novel and romance.
