Authors:

  • Tommy Orange
Cover of There There

Not since Sherman Alexies The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Louise Erdrichs Love Medicine has such a powerful and urgent Native American voice exploded onto the landscape of contemporary fiction. Tommy Oranges There There introduces a brilliant new author at the start of a major career. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame in Oakland. Dene Oxedrene is pulling his life together after his uncles death and has come to work the powwow and to honor his uncles memory. Edwin Frank has come to find his true father. Bobby Big Medicine has come to drum the Grand Entry. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil Red Feather; Orvil has taught himself Indian dance through YouTube videos, and he has come to the Big Oakland Powwow to dance in public for the very first time. Tony Loneman is a young Native American boy whose future seems destined to be as bleak as his past, and he has come to the Powwow with darker intentions--intentions that will destroy the lives of everyone in his path. Fierce, angry, funny, groundbreaking--Tommy Oranges first novel is a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen. There There is a multi-generational, relentlessly paced story about violence and recovery, hope and loss, identity and power, dislocation and communion, and the beauty and despair woven into the history of a nation and its people. A glorious, unforgettable debut.” --Adapted from publisher description.

Citations

Orange, Tommy. There There. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018.