![]() ![]() Helping musicians is her way of keeping the Indian spirit alive. Thomas directs the old man to Big Mom, an ageless, mythic woman who lives atop a nearby mountain and has helped generations of musicians over the years, including Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. But the bargain has kept him on the run, and now he has been led by a vision to the reservation, seeking salvation. Now a very old man, Johnson has been running for years from a figure he calls simply "the Gentleman." We learn that Johnson sold his freedom to the satanic white Gentleman in return for becoming the best guitar player in the world. As the story opens in 1992, for example, black blues singer Robert Johnson, who in real life died in 1938, wanders onto the reservation and meets up with the book's central character, Thomas Builds- the-Fire, known on the reservation for his storytelling skills. ![]() The men and women who struggle to eke out a meager living on the Spokane Reservation in Wellpinit, Wash., call themselves Indians, with an ironic mix of pride and resignation that endows them with compelling authenticity.Īlexie, author of the prize-winning story collection "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven," adopts a connected- story structure for his novel as he follows five Indians who gain a small measure of success and a bit of dangerous hope by forming a rock group called Coyote Springs.Īlexie makes his story credible while playing fast and loose with the conventions of time. Sherman Alexie's extraordinary debut novel, "Reservation Blues," is not about Native Americans. ![]()
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