The Shadow Catcher

The Shadow Catcher is a journey through time, a story-within-a-story that seamlessly interweaves the nineteenth-century life of renowned photographer of the Native American peoples Edward S. Curtis with the present-day story of an unlikely father-daughter reunion from beyond the grave. Told in the first person by a fictional character named Marianne Wiggins, the novel begins in Los Angeles, where Hollywood is in pursuit of the manuscript for The Shadow Catcher, about the photographer's self-proclaimed mission to document a vanishing race. 'This is the perfect project', the film producers gush. 'It's got the outdoors. It's got adventure. It's got the do-good element.' This surface reading of Curtis's biography (the one popularly held today) sets in motion a journey into the American past, where his complex emotional life bore no resemblance to his esteemed public reputation as servant to his nation. In reality, the artist was an absent husband and disappearing father. This is where Marianne's father, John Wiggins, comes in.Fuelled by the great American passions for love and land and family, The Shadow Catcher chases the silhouettes of our collective history into the bright light of the present.