Synopses & Reviews
An extraordinary, evocative novel about a young Native American coming to terms with his heritage and his dreams.
The narrator of this beautiful, sometimes bizarre tale is a sensitive, self-destructive young man living on the Blackfoot Reservation in Montana. He is haunted by memories of an older brother, dead at the age of fourteen; of his father (who made white men laugh at the local bar), found frozen to death in a snowdrift; and of his once-proud heritage.
He sleepwalks through his chores, consoles himself with women. The visions he sees and the echoes he hears are swallowed up in Montana's vast emptiness. Yet he struggles against that emptiness, searching for something that will bind him to the lands of his ancestors.
Review
"A nearly flawless novel about human life....Few books in any year speak so unanswerably, make their own local terms so thoroughly ours." Reynolds Price, New York Times Book Review
Review
"For some readers this will be the most significant piece of Indian writing they have yet encountered; for others it will simply be a brilliant novel." Charles R. Larson, The New Republic
Synopsis
The author of Fool's Crow and Indian Lawyer presents an extraordinary, evocative novel about a young Native American coming to terms with his heritage and his dreams.
Synopsis
Two contemporary classics from a major writer of the Native American renaissance During his life, James Welch came to be regarded as a master of American prose, and his first novel, Winter in the Blood, is one of his most enduring works. The narrator of this beautiful, often disquieting novel is a young Native American man living on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. Sensitive and self-destructive, he searches for something that will bind him to the lands of his ancestors but is haunted by personal tragedy, the dissolution of his once proud heritage, and Montana's vast emptiness. Winter in the Blood is an evocative and unforgettable work of literature that will continue to move and inspire anyone who encounters it.
About the Author
James Welch is the author of the novels Winter in the Blood, Fools Crow, for which he received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, an American Book Award, and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, The Indian Lawyer, The Death of Jim Lonely, and most recently, Killing Custer: The Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians. He attended schools on the Blackfeet and Fort Belknap reservations in Montana, and he graduated from the University of Montana, where he studied writing with the late Richard Hugo. Until recently, he served on the Montana State Board of Pardons. He lives in Missoula with his wife, Lois.