Ledfeather - Softcover

Jones, Stephen Graham

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573661465 ISBN 13: 9781573661461

Publisher: Fiction Collective 2, 2008

Synopsis

After burning up the blacktop in New Mexico with The Fast Red Road and rewriting Indian history on the Great Plains with The Bird is Gone, Stephen Graham Jones now takes us to Montana. Set on a Blackfeet Indian reservation, the life of one Indian boy, Doby Saxon, is laid bare through the eyes of those who witness it: his near-death experience, his suicide attempts, his brief glimpse of victory, and the unnecessary death of one of his best friends.

But through Doby there emerges a connection to the past, to an Indian Agent who served the United States Government over a century before. This revelation leads to another and another until it becomes clear that the decisions of this single Indian Agent have impacted the lives of generations of Blackfeet Indians. And the life of Doby Saxon, a boy standing in the middle of the road at night, his hands balled into fists, the reservation wheeling all around him like the whole of Blackfeet history hurtling towards him.

Jones’s beautifully complex novel is a story of life, death, love, and the ties that bind us not only to what has been, but what will be: the power of one moment, the weight of one decision, the inevitability of one outcome, and the price of one life.

About this title

About the Author:

Stephen Graham Jones is the author of five novels, including the award-winning FC2 novels The Fast Red Road and The Bird is Gone, and one award-winning short story collection, Bleed Into Me. He teaches fiction at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

From Booklist:

Set on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, and spanning 125 years, this is a mesmerizing tale of characters bound by the mystical ties of familial love, death wishes, and survival. Opening with the near death of Doby Saxon from exposure, the tale leads the reader backward and forward in Doby’s pathetic life, always returning to his futile attempt at killing himself by stepping in front of speeding cars near the Starr School. The scene shifts to 1884, and the letters written by an Indian agent on the Blackfeet Reservation to his wife—letters never sent, never opened. He witnesses the attempts of a 12-year-old Blackfeet boy to stone himself to death. The two stories are tied by characters and emotions, coincidence and magic realism—but ultimately by Blackfeet author Jones’ deft portraits of the seemingly hopeless life on this reservation, years apart but similar in myriad ways. His depiction of how small events eventually lead to apparently preordained outcomes, and how these outcomes come full circle over decades, is masterful. --Deborah Donovan

About this edition

• Publisher: Fiction Collective 2
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1573661465
• ISBN 13: 9781573661461
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 212