Ganado Red - Softcover

Lowell, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0915943263 ISBN 13: 9780915943265

Publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1988

Synopsis

1989 Milkweed trade paperback, 3rd printing. Susan Lowell (Cindy Ellen: A Wild Western Cinderella). In the novella that accompanies the eight stories in this collection, Susan Lowell traces the ownership of an intricate Navajo rug - the Ganado Red of the title - over sixty years, from its Navajo creator through its various collector/owners. With each owner, the story rests, collects itself, looks about to examine its surroundings, the characters, and the effect of the brilliant blood-red rug upon the people around it. - Amazon

About this title

Review

In the novella that accompanies the eight stories in this collection, Susan Lowell traces the ownership of an intricate Navajo rug - the Ganado Red of the title - over sixty years, from its Navajo creator through its various collector/owners. With each owner, the story rests, collects itself, looks about to examine its surroundings, the characters, and the effect of the brilliant blood-red rug upon the people around it. It is the last owner who at a turning point in her life discovers the red thread that runs through the black border: "the spirit line...Every Navajo design is supposed to be imperfect, with an opening so the spirits won't be trapped. Sometimes it's called the weaver's pathway - on to another rug. A better one, maybe." Susan Lowell's other stories follow a similar patter: wild pigs, illegal aliens, nuclear bomb tests, a gun - each provides a continuing thread and symbol while the story spreads out around it. The majority of these stories are set in the Southwest United States, where the author lives, and they share the spare beauty of the country. The details, never many, are inserted almost cautiously in between the cool detachment of the characters' thoughts. The effect is clear and arid, sometimes sharp, other times serene. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister

From Publishers Weekly

The winner of the first Milkweed National Fiction Prize competition, judged by Lopate, this exceptional collection conveys an atmosphere of subdued tension and danger, stemming from the characters' often tenuous ability to make sense of the world, and from their search for connectedness in the midst of terrible solitude. Lowell, an Arizona native, sets most of her stories in the American Southwest, and, indeed, the land is a vigorous presence throughout. In "Los Mojados" (illegal aliens), a crippled old man combats pain by imagining that he is riding horseback across his land: "As he rode through the nights he could feel in his bones the places where the barbed mesquites made you duck. It was a harsh, hard-baked country; Joe loved it with a passionate awe that he had never felt for a human being." The title novella follows an Indian rug from its weaver, an elderly Navajo woman, through the lives of its owners. As finely wrought as the rug, this piece alternately treats its characters with sarcasm and compassionate warmth and humor. Lowell's empathy for the human condition is deftly limned in singular portraits of Americana: Indians, illegal aliens and ranchers; children and the aged; the innocent and the corrupt. This shimmering debut heralds a distinctive regional voice with universal appeal.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0915943263
• ISBN 13: 9780915943265
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 149