Book Review: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Reviewed By: Jennifer Jordan

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Sherman Alexie
Class/Genre:   Fiction   Native American   [Short Stories]
1994, HarperPerennial, Fiction/Short Stories/Native Americans - 240 pages

Mr. Alexie is an extraordinary wordsmith. He is a multiple award winning, much praise heaped upon writer and amazingly prolific. Reading his work has always been like being put under a spell for me. It is a spell I'm willing to succumb to over and over again.

In this collection of 22 linked short stories, we are introduced to a series of characters whose world is completely alien to anyone that has never lived on a reservation. These stories are likes an elegy to the Indian people, written in a deep and resonating voice that is carried with you well after the book itself is laid to rest. Nowhere else will you see such a dazzling array humor and darkness, passion and affliction. His characters are eloquent, painfully human and stunningly wry. Yet, their pain is our pain and their stories, light years away from our own, are our stories. Victor is the lonely child in all of us and Thomas-Builds-the-Fire is the storyteller ignored in all of us. And, yet, as Native Americans, their story is one that needs to be told and heard in all of its complexity, haunting pain and myriad redemption.

These short stories, a precursor to Reservation Blues, are a true work of art.

Jennifer Jordan

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Jennifer Jordan

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