Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction)

Product Details

• Ready: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Surplus Mark.
• ISBN13: 9780140089370

Description

The year is 1870, and Fool's Crow, so called after he killed the chief of the Crows during a raid, has a vision at the annual Sun Dance ceremony. The young warrior sees the end of the Indian way of life and the choice that must be made: resistance or humiliating accommodation. "A major contibution to Native American literature."--Wallace Stegner.

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Customer Reviews

Must-read list
This is a must-read book for anyone interested in the history of America. Although centered on the Blackfeet culture and clash with the westward settlement, other Indian tribes where going through similar or had gone through similar issues of dealing with other tribes and the white immigration. I read this book because it was on the list of the nine favorite books of Sherman Alexie's main character in The Absolutely True Biography of a Part-time Indian. On the list were The Grapes of Wrath, Invisible Man, and Catcher in the Rye. It deserves to be in such company. More than a description of the Blackfeet lifestyle, mythology, and relations to other tribes such as the Crow during the time of pioneers and settlers grabbing land and homesteading, it is a well-written book by an obviously talented observer and story-teller. This is a fascinating book and a timeless book. It is a topical story about managing insurgencies in an indigenous population and the failure to understand the implications of people trying to deal with survival threats. How did the US government deal with a people who have their own religion, mythology and lifestyle for survival? What are the similarities to the Vietnam war, the Iraqi War, and the Afghan War when working with an indigenous population some of which may be hostile, some not. This book is much more than these topics. It does not take sides and does not glamorize either culture, the european settlers or the Indians. It is a rich detailing of a snapshot in time, eloquently capturing the universe of the Blackfeet, transporting you to a place, time, and culture and then immersing you into it until you almost feel you have lived it. This is a grand well-written adventure into the mindset and life of the 1870 Blackfeet for which it cost you the price of the book and your time to read.

2009-11-30 | bookhead (Fort Collins, CO USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Awesome and Fluid - What Historical Fiction SHOULD Be!
This is a remarkable book. The prose flows beautifully (mostly), and captures the people, time place of the Blackfeet's tragic last period of freedom on the northern plains wonderfully.

I read this book while traveling through the modern Blackfeet reservation and Glacier National Park. I met with traditional Blackfeet, and what's in this book is really their culture, stories, way of life, and wisdom. What is special about this work is that it is BOTH an authentic historical fiction, and yet ISN'T wooden or 1-dimensional in its characters. ALL of the characters are "real" - the Blackfeet are human with flaws and all; with the whites (settlers and soldiers) you also get "real" people struggling with their situations as they experience them from their own perspective. I would contrast James Welch's fully developed characters with the more wooden, 1-dimensional style of Joseph Marshall. Marshall is often marketed as bringing forth a new type of western with his "Lakota Western" series. James Welch beats him in maturity of writing. This book was also published 20 years ahead of Marshall's Lakota Westerns.

On a critical note - there are times (though not often) where the writing is interrupted with interspersed vulgar words (i.e. "piss") that jarr or contrast too sharply with the overall writing style. Not sure why this was done - maybe for effect? Though not explicit, issue of rape are also included. This is not overdone, but merely reflects the realities of the time.

Good fiction, and esp. good historical fiction is hard to find. I'm sorry it took me so long to find this gem. If you like the west and Native American history, you will love this book.

2009-06-23 (Stow, Ohio United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Fools Crow
I am having to read this book in my english class, and I do not like it. The book was in okay condition, would have been better without all of the writing in it.

2009-06-13 | Teresa (North Carolina) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Snooze Fest
I was forced to read this book for a college history class. This book is the exact reason I hate to read. It is long, boring, drawn out way too far, skips randomly from one situation to another, and never gets to a point. This book could have been 1/3 the length and delivered the same message. Indians struggle, cheating wives.. blah blah blah. Too many "dream sequences." Often the book would switch in and out of dreams, often making me wonder which was which. This is the second worst book I've ever read, only behind, "The Woman Warrior."

2009-05-11 | ReadingIsObsolete (California) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 1

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Happiness walks with sadness
Fools' Crow

The Pikunis must deal with the coming of the Napikwans (the whites). At first things go fairly well, a bit exciting for the bands as trade picks up at the forts, they live by treaty and live in relative peace for many years, but the Napikwans gradually move their whitehorns (cattle) into all of what is now Montana stretched up to the Back bone of the World (the Rocky Mountains) and eventually trickle north of the Medicine Line (Canada and U.S. Border).

Fools Crow is preparing for the greatest task of his life, that is to help prepare his people for the Napikwan takeover and the removal of his people from their lands. Should he and his band move north and live with those relatives that are still free from government control, but who are limited to the fishing they survive on. The other choice is to submit and learn to survive within the confines of the Napikwan agency, getting used to guns, whiskey, abuse and starvation to name a few of its attributes. What will Fool Crows do to help his people?

In this book we learn of a whole new descriptive way of looking at the world through the mind of the Plains Indians; the great buffalo hunters for which there is no possible equal. This is one of few potent portrayals of a history that we have had but a glimmer of, and thanks to the talent of James Welch who was born on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana, we are treated to a spectacular voice for the vision of that not so long ago world.

There are times in this life when we must prepare for something that may seem impossible to deal with, and the choices become absurd. This is the book to read then to take heart and be of courage. As Welch points out, there is a type of happiness that walks with sadness.

2008-12-29 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Winter in the Blood (Penguin Classics)

Product Details

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• Influence: NEW
• ISBN13: 9780143105220
• Notes: Name brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Description

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.

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Customer Reviews

Excellent Novel...
It's been several years since I've read this book, but what I remember is walking away from it very satisfied and impressed. Enjoy.

2009-05-12 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Wisdom and Beauty Among the Ruins
This is one of the most moving, one of the most touching books about the American West that I know. From the incredible first paragraph right to the last sentence, this is an important story of a young man living somewhere between the world of his Native American ancestors and the mean streets of the modern American West. I've read and read the book many times, yet several scenes always catch me off guard with their beauty and emotional power. And as I read those sections, I still discover tears running down my cheeks. Jim Welch was a friend of mine. He was a beautiful and very kind man who always had time for young writers who were trying to learn their craft. I can still hear his voice, and I miss him all the time.

2009-04-27 | Jackson Creek (Grand Junction, Colorado United States) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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An eye-catching portrait of modern American Indian life
Written by American-Indian author James Welch, Winter in the Blood portrays a thirty two year old American-Indian man who lives on a reservation in Montana with his mother. He engages in no activities that you could term truly heroic -- he works on his family farm, gets into a bar fight in town, has one-night stands, becomes a partner with strangers in crime. What distinguishes this novel is how it gives us a view of the `American Experience' through non-white eyes. It is meant to be an authentic portrait of American Indian life in the late twentieth century; it is like a painting of the American West that is evocative of certain mood and of a certain time and place, but which does not convey anything very profound.

The prose is earthy, gritty in style. I found it to be the best, most enjoyable part of the novel. The style is simple in a very matter-of-fact way -- it can be funny, crude, or emotionally stirring, but it is like this simply as a matter of relating things as they strike the protagonist (for instance, there is a part where he says that once he shot his neighbor's dog solely because he "was drunk and it was moving.") The prose manages to be evocative without demonstrating that the author knows how to use a thesaurus, exhibiting a skillful expressiveness executed with an economy of means. What's appealing about this novel is no so much what the protagonist does as it is the gripping means with which the scenes are conveyed.

The main character, however, is not well developed; most of the secondary characters are more fleshed out and more compelling than the protagonist himself. (True enough, though, this novel is more about the environment the central character is in than about the protagonist himself.) The dialogue can be confusing, at times you can lose track of which lines of dialogue belong to which character. It is difficult to say exactly what this novel is about; the protagonist makes a few cracks about being in a white man's world and about this "greedy stupid country", but none of this forms into any coherent political diatribe, nor do the actions the protagonist takes or the events that occur to him gain any significance in this light. He merely does stuff, which can be either funny or picturesque, but which has little meaning apart from the actions themselves.

This is not to say that Winter in the Blood is not on the whole enjoyable, for I found it so. It has enough virtues to make it a worthy read. It paints an eye-catching snap-shot of modern American Indian life.

2004-05-02 (NJ, USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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A book of sorrows, comedy, and joy
James Welch is probably Montana's foremost Native American writer, and this wonderful novella is evidence of considerable talent. Published 30 years ago (1974), it takes place in the shadow that was cast by the nation's approaching bicentennial. While neither bitter nor angry, it manages anyway to portray a country that has little to show for itself but "greed and stupidity." The values it embraces are finally those available to every American, native or otherwise - compassion and respect for life and the living.

The story concerns a few days in the life of a 32-year-old man, descendant of Indians and living in two worlds, his mother's home on the reservation and the dreary bars and hotels of nearby Havre and Malta, Montana. His days and nights blending together in an alcoholic haze, he meets a deranged white man, picks up women and gets punched in the nose. Meanwhile, he is haunted by a past that includes the death of an older brother and an injury to his knee that multiple operations have not remedied. Out of these unpromising circumstances, Welch finds the beginnings of a kind of personal salvation. By reaching back through the memory of a blind old man's act of charity, he restores the younger man's vision of himself.

Among the ranks of modern Native American writers, such as Louise Erdrich, Welch opens up a world for non-Indian readers that goes well beyond the usual stereotypes. His Indians are strikingly individual, absorbed in the everyday, motivated as much by self-interest and cock-eyed notions as their white counterparts. In Welch's hands, a conversation among five of them can be as comic and absurd as Ionesco. Meanwhile, the Native American past is there to ground a person with a sense of purpose and identity. For all its sorrows, Welch's story is finally a joy to read.

2004-01-17 | rockysquirrel (Los Angeles) | Helpful Votes: 21 | Rating: 5

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Winter in the Blood
Winter in the Blood was a good piece of Montana literature. It told a believable story of the life of a man living on the Blackfoot Reservation. It was interesting to read about how his brother and father died and how he ended up living there. The things that happened to him were interesting too. Like how he could go all the way to Havre just to find a woman who stole a couple things of his. The downside of the book was that it's kind of slow in some spots but not so much spots that the book just makes you want to stop reading it.

2003-11-04 (ronan montana) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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The Death of Jim Loney (Penguin Classics)

Product Details

• Qualification: NEW
• <a title='Condition Guide' href='/content/Condition_and_S hipping_Guide.htm' target='_blank'>Click here to intention our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices</a>
• ISBN13: 9780143105183
• Notes: Trade mark New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Description

James Welch never shied away from depicting the lives of Native Americans damned by destiny and temperament to the margins of society. The Death of Jim Loney is no exception. Jim Loney is a mixed-blood, of white and Indian parentage. Estranged from both communities, he lives a solitary, brooding existence in a small Montana town. His nights are filled with disturbing dreams that haunt his waking hours. Rhea, his lover, cannot console him; Kate, his sister, cannot penetrate his world. In sparse, moving prose, Welch has crafted a riveting tale of disenfranchisement and self-destruction.

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Customer Reviews

Lost . . .
While the central character of this short novel, Jim Loney, is stricken with a loss of direction and purpose that suggests a death of the soul itself, the characters surrounding him are themselves unmoored and drifting in their own ways. Jim, cast adrift early in life as a throw-away child of an Indian mother and white father, believes that his life would take on meaning if only he knew more about his background. But being a "half-breed" merely deepens the confusion about his identity. His older sister, Kate, with a beltway job in Washington DC tries unsuccessfully to jump start his life, and partly as a result, begins to doubt that most Indians can be rescued from what amounts to a debilitating inertia.

Meanwhile, Jim's sometime girlfriend, Rhea, on the lam from an upper middle-class family in Dallas, has taken a teaching job in the northern Montana town of Harlem, where the story takes place, and abruptly quits in the middle of the school year to go back to Texas or to Seattle, she doesn't know where, and to do what, she isn't sure either. And a town cop, recently relocated from the Bay Area of California, decides after a bedding a few of the local women that small town life in the back of beyond is not to his liking. It is the late 1970s, in that period of post-Vietnam, pre-Reagan vagueness about national purpose and identity, and Jim Loney's lonely 35-year-old life settles sadly into an alcohol-soaked oblivion that drifts finally into an inevitable and violent ending.

Clearly and beautifully written, but without the humor in Welch's previous "Winter in the Blood," this novel is a melanchly portrayal of isolation and loss. And identifying with the central character, readers are likely to feel that they are watching a loved but frustratingly detached friend gradually slipping away.

2009-08-13 | rockysquirrel (Los Angeles) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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M.F.A. Program Reading
Basically, the book tells the story of how Jim Loney drinks himself into oblivion and then gets killed by the police. There were few interesting points in the book, but maybe the author was trying to show through the reading how uninteresting Jim Loney's life was. I thought the sister and Jim's girlfriend were strong characters, but since Jim wanted to drink himself to death, I don't think they played much in the book. I read this book because I saw the title on an M.F.A. reading list. Technically, the book was well written, but in terms of subject and plot, it was kind of a bore.

2009-06-28 | j11111 (Hannibal, MO) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Heart-achingly gorgeous
This is such a heart-aching book. It's gorgeous and simple and so sad. I read it for a course at University and am so glad to have encountered this treasure. I've marked the hell out of its few pages. My professor highly encouraged us to write all over our books, as a way of CLAIMING the books and the reading process as MINE. (Something I've always been a fan of, anyways). Concise and so powerful. Each word is perfectly chosen. Everyone should read this novel.

2005-09-21 (Seattle, WA USA) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 5

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personal Armageddon
Nihilistic and lonely, Welch offers a vision of Manifest Destiny in reverse, and an exploration of, amongst other things, the Anglo desire to Cowboy and Indian, though in the context of that novel there is nothing romantic about these romanticized ideals; there is the wind and there are the ghosts and bottles line up in front of the middle and the final solution is personal Armageddon.

2004-08-16 | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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pretty good book
The Death of Jim Loney is a story about Jim Loney, a poor drunk, half-breed, of white and Indian parentage, who is trying to find where his life went wrong. Was it his mother that left him and his sister when they were children, or their father who disowned them nine years later? Or is it the gradual decay of his reason to exist? Nobody can penetrate his world, not his girlfriend Rhea or his sister Kate. This story goes through his troubles and struggles everyday, fighting off thoughts of death and despair. I liked this book, although its not a book you want to read to feel good about yoursef, it will get you depressed!

2003-10-29 (Ronan, MT USA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 4

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The Heartsong of Charging Elk: A Novel

Description

From the award-winning author of the Native American classic Fools Crow, a richly crafted novel of cultural crossing that is a triumph of storytelling and the historical imagination.

Charging Elk, an Oglala Sioux, joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and journeys from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the back streets of nineteenth-century Marseille. Left behind in a Marseille hospital after a serious injury while the show travels on, he is forced to remake his life alone in a strange land. He struggles to adapt as well as he can, while holding on to the memories and traditions of life on the Plains and eventually falling in love. But none of the worlds the Indian has known can prepare him for the betrayal that follows. This is a story of the American Indian that we have seldom seen: a stranger in a strange land, often an invisible man, loving, violent, trusting, wary, protective, and defenseless against a society that excludes him but judges him by its rules. At once epic and intimate, The Heartsong of Charging Elk echoes across time, geography, and cultures.

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In the bitter morning of defeat, when the last battle has been lost to the white man, the protagonist of The Heartsong of Charging Elk faces a series of decisions. Should he adapt to reservation life or go wandering, a fugitive in a terrible new world? Should he become docile or violent? These are the questions at the heart of James Welch's novel, which is based on the true story of an Oglala Sioux who was plucked from the reservation to perform in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

The multiple paradoxes of his situation--a Native American acting out pseudo-Native American pageants for European audiences--are alternately comical and cruel, pathetic and poignant. "Of course," muses Charging Elk, "he knew that it was all fake and that some of the elders back home disapproved of the young men going off to participate in the white man's sham, but he no longer felt guilty about singing scalping songs or participating in scalp dances or sneak-up dances." Halfway through the tour, however, he finds himself laid up in Marseilles with broken ribs and a bout of influenza. In his delirium, he worries that the Wild West troupe may have left him behind to die--and since they are the only family he has left, Charging Elk flees the white man's "healing house" in a panic, hoping to catch up with his companions.

It's here that the novel actually begins. Welch has latched onto a fantastically rich premise: a Native American loose in a French city, delirious, hungry, and surrounded by ghosts. Charging Elk's odyssey through Marseilles is intercut with flashbacks, and his memories of the Black Hills--of life before his America was lost--generate the novel's most powerful prose. There are weak spots, too, particularly when the hero engages in some Wild Western violence. Passionate and unsteady, The Heartsong of Charging Elk tends to move in and out of focus. But during its intervals of clarity, it's hard to resist. --Emily White

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Customer Reviews

A fun, albeit long trip.
While it'll take you a long time to polish off, this is one of the more interesting native american novels around.

There are no pretentious stylistic experiments, and it contains well-drawn secondary characters, a breath of fresh air in this genre.

2008-10-20 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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One of the best....
The Heartsong of Charging Elk is one of the most engaging and heartfelt books that I have read in a long time. This book allows one to view "Western or European" culture through the lens of Lakota heritage. Once I began this book I did not put it down for the next three days that it took me to finish reading it. I was amazed, horrified and enlighted by the story that was told.

2008-09-18 (LA, CA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Very mesmerizing!
Surprisingly mesmerizing! Get this: This is my husband, Bob's, book. He gave it to me to list on Amazon Marketplace. While waiting for my very slow dial-up modem to take me to the right page, I flipped to the middle and glanced at it. And here I am, over an hour later, still reading! So, hopefully no one will buy it for a day or 2 so that I can read the whole thing! LOL I'm really enjoying it.

The story of Charging Elk is sad...so much that happens to him seems to be out of his control. But he continues to do his best, and persevere. I like that he is making the best of his bad situations. I can't tell you how it begins or ends -read someone else's review for that. All I can tell you is if you pick up this book and impulsively read a page, you'll be sucked in and committed to reading the whole book! You won't regret it.

I am an avid reader and have enjoyed stories of Native People in the past. I'm glad that I've gotten the opportunity to enjoy this one! Another book of Native People that I've liked is Tatham Mound, by Piers Anthony. No, it's not fantasy. It's a pretty serious book, as this one is. But not quite as...heavy, I guess you'd say. Heartsong of Charging Elk is not lighthearted. I suspect it will stick with me for years...the ultimate sign of a great book! ----Review from Kathy Smith, Bob's wife

2007-07-12 | Robert Smith, Ph.D. (Virginia, USA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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THE HEARTSONG OF CHARGING ELK
Having read all of Welch's novels, I found this to be the most impressive. It really describes well an incident in the history of Anglo/Native relationships not having to rely on violence, romance,
or hidden agendas... highly recommended.

2007-04-04 (Bellingham, WA USA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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A Fantastic Cultural Adventure
Through the eyes of a Lakota man marooned in Marseille we experience both the declining culture of late 19th century native America and the excitement of a vibrant of port city in France. These seem unlikely settings but Welch's descriptions and characterizations make both come to life. We can feel the fear and uncertainty that Charging Elk feels as he finds his way to accepting the strange new world and his longing for the place and the people he has left behind. And we can feel the foreboding or distain but more often the curiosity and the compassion of the French people he encounters. It's a bumpy ride for Charging Elk and sometimes a bit plodding for the reader but the story works and was hard to put down once I got into it.

2004-09-29 (Seattle Washington USA) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5

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The Indian Lawyer.

Description

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James Welch: A Critical Companion (Critical Companions to Popular Contemporary Writers)

Description

Through both his fiction and non-fiction writing, James Welch gives voice to the history, heritage, and cultural identity of the American Indian. This companion provides a fascinating exploration of the man, his writing, and the impact and influence of his literary output. With information based on a series of personal interviews conducted for this book, the biographical chapter offers an insightful account of Welch's life as a Blackfoot Indian, and as a poet and novelist.

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