Reservation Blues - Hardcover

Alexie, Sherman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0871135949 ISBN 13: 9780871135940

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995

Synopsis

In a first novel by the author of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson appears on an Indian reservation to lead a Catholic rock band. 40,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo. Tour.

About this title

About the Author

Sherman Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian. He earned a 1994 Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award, was a citation winner for the PEN/Hemingway Award for the Best First Book of Fiction, and was named one of Granta's Best of the Young American Novelists. Alexie is the author of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven , which served as the basis for a film that premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. His book Reservation Blues won him the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award. Alexie's several books of poetry include I Would Steal Horses, Old Shirts & New Skins, First Indian on the Moon , and The Summer of Black Widows.

From Booklist

"Coyote Springs counted one, two, three, then fell into their first paid chord together, off rhythm. They stopped, counted again, rose into that first chord again, then the second, third, and in a move that stunned the crowd and instantly propelled them past nearly every rock band in history, played a fourth chord and nearly a fifth."

Coyote Springs is an all-Indian Catholic rock band from the Spokane Reservation in eastern Washington, and if their career eventually crashes and burns, the novel they inhabit soars like that elusive fifth chord. A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian and the author of the critically acclaimed The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), Alexie mixes biting black humor, a healthy dose of magic, and sparkling lyricism to produce a remarkably powerful story with roots not only in Native American mythology, but also in the equally potent history of rock 'n' roll. Alexie's characters, including lead singer Thomas Builds-the-Fire, lead guitarist Victor Joseph, and backup vocalists Chess and Checkers Warm Water, are reservation Indians, but they are also kids with guitars committed to putting on their own show. Like Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich, Alexie writes about Indians who are individuals first and members of an ethnic group second. The stuff of their lives, the pain, the poverty, the humor, the resilience, grows out of their experience on the reservation, to be sure, but it also fuels their need to be heard in their own voices: "Thomas Builds-the-Fire wanted his tears to be individual, not tribal." You can hear Thomas' need in every note of these unforgettable reservation blues. Bill ^IOtt

About this edition

• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0871135949
• ISBN 13: 9780871135940
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 306