Alice, or The Wild Girl

In 1856, Lieutenant Henry Aaron Bird makes a startling discovery: a speechless, shipwrecked young girl, living a feral existence on a remote Pacific island. When he exhibits her as a “wild girl” in the chaotic sprawl of early San Francisco, this golden-haired child without a past will be seen by the populace as a scientific curiosity, a titillating image of female savagery, or, for many, a symbol of the unspoiled body of that young country. For Bird, she is a fragile ward in need of protect...