The Absence of Angels

Albert Hummingbird, a shy mixed-blood Native American college student, struggles to reconcile his Nez Perce heritage with the white culture of his mother

Albert (Alley) Hummingbird, the shy hero of this imaginative and entertaining first novel, is a mixed-blood Indian who must contend with a father who abandoned Nez Perce ways to marry a rather daft white woman, with an uncle haunted by the ghosts of pilots he sent to their deaths during WW II and with Death itself, which is treated as a character. To save newborn Alley from the grim reaper, his grandfather, the source of his Native American values, "took a disappointed Death by the wrist, put Him in the passenger seat of the 1947 Plymouth" and drove to a far-off mission, "where he left Him chained like a rabid dog." The boy will encounter Death again in pet burials and his sister's secret retreats to the graveyard. The opposite sex also causes much heartache for Alley, who feels the need to make everything right for every woman he knows. Skipping lyrically between his hero's childhood and young adulthood, Penn has produced a delightful work of magic realism reminiscent of John Nichols's The Milagro Beanfield War . Flashbacks abound, and the reader is never quite sure whether Alley's wise grandfather is alive or merely living in his imagination. Himself of Native American and white ancestry, the author limns with insight the struggles of modern, urban, often mixed-blood Indians to forge a coherent identity.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A Bildungsroman filtered through Native American sensibilities serves as Penn's first novel as he follows his young hero from Hopiland to L.A.--all on a search for love, self, and understanding, complicated by a fragmented family beset by tragedy. Alley Hummingbird, with white and Indian blood in his veins, has a special bond with his Nez Perce grandfather, who labeled him a survivor at birth when the medical establishment thought him dead, and whom he hears through the ether in California when he isn't visiting the Hopi Second Mesa where the old man lives. Alley's stern, taciturn father and loquacious mother--who talks intimately to strangers and toasters--make him rebellious, uncertain, and eager to find refuge elsewhere. In the company of William the Black, like himself a fish out of water in white suburbia, he dabbles in sex and selling liquor to minors, until William's middle-class aspirations are threatened and he leaves Alley in the lurch. With the Vietnam War underway, Alley enters an exclusive college and joins ROTC out of a desperate need to belong, only to find women shunning him. Sara Baites, a professor's artistic daughter, shows greater tolerance, but just as their fumbling romance is finally going smoothly, Alley learns that his blinding headaches are caused by a brain tumor, and that the prognosis for his survival after surgery is only 50/50. Death has been a shifty, strung-out presence from the outset, but with help from his family and Sara, Alley recovers--only to find Death waiting at the foot of grandfather's bed. A tender, compelling coming-of-age saga, with youthful alienation and family pride represented in a delicate, often uproarious combination. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Penn's first novel has all the usual pain-inducing ingredients identifiable with any Bildungsroman. These are mixed together well with elements of Native American myth, a beautifully evoked Southwestern landscape, and humor. Memorable characters like wise girlfriend Sara, an even wiser Grandfather, and, surprisingly enough, Death, accompany Albert "Alley" Hummingbird on his journey through young adulthood. In the process, Penn poignantly reveals the difficult personal politics of identity facing this young man of Native American and WASP descent. Just recently awarded the 1994 North American Indian Prose Award by the University of Nebraska Press, Penn certainly promises to reach a wide audience with this novel. Recommended especially for collections emphasizing Native American literature.
- Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.