The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / Alexie, Sherman
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Alexie, Sherman	4-week checkout	On Shelf

"With a new prologue"--Cover.
Includes a reading group guide.
Every little hurricane -- Drug called tradition -- Because my father always said he was the only Indian who saw Jimi Hendrix play "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock -- Crazy Horse dreams -- Only traffic signal on the reservation doesn't flash red anymore -- Amusements -- This is what it means to say Phoenix, Arizona -- Fun house -- All I wanted to do was dance -- Trial of Thomas Builds-the-fire -- Distances -- Jesus Christ's Half-brother is alive and well on the Spokane Indian Reservation -- Train is an order of occurrence designed to lead to some result -- A good story -- First annual all-Indian horseshoe pitch and barbecue -- Imagining the reservation -- The approximate size of my favorite tumor -- Indian education -- Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in Heaven -- Family portrait -- Somebody kept saying Powwow -- Witnesses, secret and not -- Flight -- Junior Polatkin's wild west show.
In his darkly comic short story collection, the author brilliantly weaves memory, fantasy, and stark realism to paint a complex, grimly ironic portrait of life in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation. These twenty-four interlinked tales are narrated by characters raised on humiliation and government-issue cheese, and yet are filled with passion and affection, myth and dream. There is Victor, who as a nine-year-old crawled between his unconscious parents hoping that the alcohol seeping through their skins might help him sleep, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, who tells his stories long after people stop listening, and Jimmy Many Horses, dying of cancer, who writes letters on stationary that reads "From the Death Bed of Jimmy Many Horses III," even though he actually writes then on his kitchen table. Against a backdrop of alcohol, car accidents, laughter, and basketball, Alexie depicts the distances between Indians and whites, reservation Indians and urban Indians, men and women, and mostly poetically between modern Indians and the traditions of the past.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Life on the reservation submitted by kferguson on July 24, 2016, 2:44pm Great stories of native American life

First Person Narrative submitted by krathje on July 31, 2016, 7:45am I use pieces from this book to teach students how to write first-person narrative. Alexie is a master at showing, not telling. His style is beautifully crafted and lyrical. A fascinating look at one Native American's experience in contemporary America.

Good read submitted by Xris on June 16, 2018, 8:30pm I read this book because my exchange daughter was reading it for a class. I enjoyed the book, but was disappointed that the title idea wasn't really fleshed out in the book. It was such a tiny blip.

One of America’s Top Writers submitted by Richard Lee Pierre on August 17, 2019, 8:57pm Alexie writes in a style that’s both straightforward and strange: clear, but not afraid to take quirks and cruelties of life and society — Native American or not — head on. The result is superb.