Grand Avenue
A Novel in Stories
by Greg Sarris
Afterword by Reginald Dyck
Published by: University of Oklahoma Press
Imprint: University of Oklahoma Press
248 Pages | 6 x 9
$21.95
$19.95
Grand Avenue runs through the center of the Northern California town of Santa Rosa. One stretch of it is home not only to Pomo Indians making a life outside the reservation but also to Mexicans, blacks, and some Portuguese, all trying to find their way among the many obstacles in their turbulent world.
Bound together by a lone ancestor, the lives of the American Indians form the core of these stories—tales of healing cures, poison, family rituals, and a humor that allows the inhabitants of Grand Avenue to see their own foibles with a saving grace.
A teenage girl falls in love with a crippled horse marked for slaughter. An aging healer summons her strength for one final song. A father seeks a bond with his illegitimate son. A mother searches for the power to care for her cancer-stricken daughter’s spirit. Here is a tapestry of lives rendered with the color, wisdom, and a quest for meaning that are characteristic of the traditional storytelling in which they are rooted, a tradition Sarris grew up hearing and learning. Vibrant with the emotions and realities of a changing world, these narratives—the basis of an HBO miniseries—are all equally stunning and from the heart.
Bound together by a lone ancestor, the lives of the American Indians form the core of these stories—tales of healing cures, poison, family rituals, and a humor that allows the inhabitants of Grand Avenue to see their own foibles with a saving grace.
A teenage girl falls in love with a crippled horse marked for slaughter. An aging healer summons her strength for one final song. A father seeks a bond with his illegitimate son. A mother searches for the power to care for her cancer-stricken daughter’s spirit. Here is a tapestry of lives rendered with the color, wisdom, and a quest for meaning that are characteristic of the traditional storytelling in which they are rooted, a tradition Sarris grew up hearing and learning. Vibrant with the emotions and realities of a changing world, these narratives—the basis of an HBO miniseries—are all equally stunning and from the heart.
Greg Sarris is author of the anthology Keeping Slug Woman Alive: A Holistic Approach to American Indian Texts, the novel Watermelon Nights, and scripts for screen and stage. He is Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and holds the Endowed Chair in Native American Studies at Sonoma State University.
Reginal Dyck is Professor of English at Capital University. His research and writing focus on the work of Native American authors, including Greg Sarris.
“Greg Sarris . . . has made himself an exciting new part of the latest Native American Literary Renaissance, but his stories go way back and they look far ahead, like the good stories that our grandmothers have told for thousands of years. Greg Sarris . . . has listened closely to their stories, and we should all listen closely to his.”—Sherman Alexie, author of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
“I admire Greg Sarris’s sense of the gritty passion of life. A resonant thread of myth and laughter pulls the tales together. He allows the story to overtake him, the sign of a fine storyteller.”—Joy Harjo author of She Had Some Horses and In Mad Love and War