MOLLY SPOTTED ELK: A Penobscot in Paris, by Bunny McBride, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Okla., 360 pages, $24.95.

Molly Spotted Elk danced her way from Old Town’s Indian Island to Boston, New York, California, France and back again. Her story, which is recounted in Bunny McBride’s newly released book, “Molly Spotted Elk: A Penobscot in Paris,” is one filled with the curiosity, ambition, hunger (figurative and literal), and personal strength of a Maine Indian woman in the first decades of this century.

Born in 1903 on Indian Island, Molliedell Nelson was the first child of Philomene and Horace Nelson. In her early years, she bathed in the Penobscot River, wandered the paths of the reservation and learned to make baskets.

Her mother saw to it that Molly took piano and voice lessons, but Molly took on the responsibility of procuring a dance education. She traded housekeeping duties for dance lessons from a teacher in Bangor. She had to walk to classes, but that was a small price for this spirited girl to pay.

At age 6, she performed her first solo — an Irish jig for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration on Indian Island. And, as they say, a star was born.

But Molly was never a typical star. She traveled with roadshows, danced in clubs in New York, modeled for artists, and even appeared in several films. Sometimes she danced topless or in skimpy costumes.

Whether nude dancing was a part of her regular engagements is not really clear in McBride’s book. What is clear is that Molly often lived hand-to-mouth and withstood racial slurs as she searched for and found work on both sides of the continent.

In 1931, she traveled to Paris as a dancer with the U.S. Indian Band for the Colonial Exposition. Drawn to the rich and racy artistic community of that time, Molly decided to stay abroad.

At cafes and salons, she hobnobbed with the artists and intelligentsia of Paris, though no particularly well-known figures are mentioned in McBride’s biography. Molly danced for royalty and continued to pursue interests in anthropology, writing and politics.

Finding work in France took just as much vigilance as finding work in America, except the French treated her with more respect, less racism.

She also found an intellectual home in Paris. There she met journalist Jean Archambaud, who became her lover, the father of her daughter, and, later, her husband. The two were soulmates. But their relationship became one of the casualties of World War II.

Jean arranged to flee the Nazis by taking a boat to free territory in France, but found out women were not allowed on board. So Molly and her young daughter set out for Lisbon, and eventually found their way back to Maine. Much of the journey was on foot, and none of it was easy. Molly’s spirit was never the same, in fact.

Molly’s story, which is based on the many journals she kept and McBride’s interviews with people who knew her, including her sister, Eunice Nelson-Baumann, and daughter, Jean Archambaud Moore, is a fascinating one.

McBride, an anthropologist interested in cultural survival, has done dogged research into Molly’s personal history and into American Indian history in general. Her bibliography reads like a Who’s Who in the field.

Maine readers particularly may recognize several figures of local notoriety, including anthropologist Frank Speck, with whom Molly studied at the University of Pennsylvania, and Madeline Shay, who wove baskets with Molly’s mother.

Although much of the research is interesting, it is exhausting to read and often gets in the way of the more provocative, personal history of Molly. The digressions, such as one that details the history of roadshows and American Indians, sometimes go on for several pages.

It’s hard not to respect McBride’s indefatigable attention to anthropological and historical information, but one can’t help but wish McBride were more of a storyteller. Her style is straightforward and accessible but lacks the elegance and passion that must have been a part of Molly herself.

And occasionally, when McBride tries to fill in the gaps of Molly’s inner world, she oversentimentalizes it.

Still, the book is a major contribution to the annals of women in history. It’s good to know about Molly because she was a gifted thinker, a talented dancer, and a woman who set unconventional goals for herself, and then reached them.