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Recently widowed, and encouraged by government relocation schemes to move Native Americans off their reservations, Betty takes her four young children from their Ojibwe roots to make a new life in Minneapolis. Her younger son Lester finds romance on the soon-to-be-demolished train, The Hiawatha, while his older brother Simon takes a dangerous job scaling skyscrapers. Their fates collide, and result in a tale of crime, punishment, and redemption.
An elegy to the American dream, and to the sometimes tragic experience of the Native Americans who helped to build it, The Hiawatha is a powerful novel that confirms David Treuer's status as a young writer of rare talent.
- Sales Rank: #399950 in Books
- Published on: 2000-06-03
- Released on: 2000-06-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .72" w x 5.50" l, .95 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
- Indians of North America
- Ojibwe Indians
- The Hiawatha
- David Treuer
Amazon.com Review
There are countless reasons why families fall apart. Fratricide, the tragic incident at the center of David Treuer's second novel, The Hiawatha, is surely one of the most agonizing. "A good job, close friends, quiet nights"--all this and more seem to beckon to Ojibwe matriarch Betty in 1961 when she uproots herself and her four children from their upstate reservation and moves the family to the inner-city promise of Minneapolis. Only when her younger son is killed by his own brother are Betty's long-decaying dreams of a better life finally extinguished, exposing not only the dark side of pursuing the American Dream, but the convoluted trails of love.
Simon, Betty's oldest child, seems doomed to misfortune, frustration, and resentment. After witnessing his father's accidental death, he feels obligated to act as family savior and protector, especially once they move to the city. His best intentions aren't enough, however, and the family eventually unravels, their devastation complete after Simon's almost inexplicable, alcohol-fueled murder of his brother. Much of the novel traces the aftermath, as Simon and Betty attempt a delicate healing, their lives muddled with both affection and remorse.
Treuer is at his best when penetrating the silent emotions of confused souls and the failed promises of human hearts. And although his observations tend to be cynical and overly broad, somewhat falsely self-assured, his knowledge of the worlds of both city and reservation is remarkably precise. In a book that can be unnecessarily gruff, Treuer exposes plainly not only the persistence of tragedy, but also the tenacity of family love. --Ben Guterson
From Publishers Weekly
Life delivers a relentless series of devastating blows to three generations of a Native American family in this heartbreaking and harrowing second novel by the author of the praised Little. The story opens when Simon is released from prison, after serving a 10-year sentence for killing his brother Lester in a drunken rage. Simon comes home to South Minneapolis to see his mother, Betty, whose grief and isolation are compounded by bitter memories of her first disastrous loss, her woodsman husband's death in a tree-felling accident. Married at 16, Betty is still in her 20s when Jacob dies, left with four children to support. Simon, who witnessed his father's gruesome death, prematurely becomes the man of the house, getting construction work high above the city. The narrative crosscuts feverishly back and forth in time, each piece of painful family history emerging to clarify previously murky allusions. Treuer gingerly explores Lester's romance with Vera, a white girl, as they find a haven of intimacy in an abandoned wreck of an old train. At Lester's death Vera is pregnant, and she eventually leaves her infant son, Lincoln, with Betty. The uneasy reunion of Lincoln (who is unaware that his uncle killed his father), Betty and the guilt-ridden Simon is edged with fear and suspicion, but by the end of the novel, this turmoil mutates into a ravaging new cycle of despair and destruction. Treuer's powerful, disturbing portrait of one Ojibwe family's struggle with poverty, violence and racism is conveyed in terse prose of driving urgency. Their bleak circumstances render Betty catatonically docile and Simon prey to hair-trigger episodes of violence; neither can cope with the odds of life stacked against them. An assortment of supporting characters are memorable and lighten the protagonists' tragic load. Bluntly effective dialogue lays bare the tough heart of Treuer's brutally compelling saga. Author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A new voice in the Native American literary landscape, Treuer (Little, 1995) returns with a numbingly sorrowful tale of a fratricide that triggered a chain of events and devastated an Indian family already reeling from the accidental death of the boys' father. Having served ten years for killing his brother Lester, Simon comes back to the decayed Minneapolis neighborhood where he did the deed, and where his mother Betty now gives him less than a warm welcome. In time, Simon learns many things that fill in the gap left by his years away: that one of his sisters died and the other moved far away, never to be heard from; that Lester left a son, Lincoln, whose 16-year-old mother abandoned him in Betty's arms just after his birth; that Betty never told the boy about his uncle or why he went to prison; that Lincoln's mother is still in the city, not far away. A job in Simon's former profession, building the steel frames of the city's skyscrapers, is out of the question, yet he ekes out a living for a while, until he kills a goose for food, only to be arrested and jailed for it. When he gets out, Betty and Lincoln are gone to the reservation and the house they lived in is being demolished. So he goes there also, where a bit of illegal fishing and an escape from the fish-and-game folks get him lost in the woods with a broken leg. He hobbles back to the city and miraculously winds up with a decent place to live, a job, and a girlfriendbut Lincoln finally learns what his uncle did to his father and comes looking for Simon, setting in motion a last round of tragic mistakes. Motivation for the initial murder is left murky to a frustrating degree, but, overall, this is a story lyrical in its sadness, one demonstrating that most precious and rare of writerly gifts: the ability to reach equally well into both the heart and mind of the reader. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
21 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
A gusty and profoundly moving book
By Lisa Schweitzer
Other reviewers have touched on the way the book describes the hardscrabble Minneapolis slums; suffice it for me to say Treuer uses his obvious talent very, very well here. He knows what he is writing about, and he writes about it extremely well.
The realism of the writing does not take away from the wonderful storytelling in this novel. Treuer's choice--fratricide--is gutsy and engaging, and his characters are believable and decent.
Death pervades the book; the deaths of Simon's father, his brother, even that of a goose force the reader to see how close to death of us live all the time. Even Simon's job is brutally dangerous. Even though death is everywhere, Treuer's writing is brilliantly alive: his descriptions defy any characterization that I could try to use for them--they are just that good, from the beginning of the book to the end.
Perhaps the moving interesting and moving character for me is Betty, Simon's mother. Her love for the people around her is so hopeless and deep that my heart clenches even now to think of her with a dead husband, one son dead, and another a murderer. The quintessential survivor, she works, scrapes by, and tolerates a scumbag landlord for the sake of children she knows have very little chance in the world. But she gives them what chances she can, by hook or by crook, via the bridge of her back. No wonder she habitually rebuffs the tender affections of a decent man.
I am afraid I haven't done justice to this book; it is a terrific novel by a true talent. The other book of his that I have read, _Little_, is another emotionally evocative work that I cannot recommend highly enough.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Tueuer opens the doors to Native American Twin Cities
By Janet W. Coy
Please read this book. David Treuer opens a window to a rarely noticed aspect of American Life, the crises of Native Americans in Urban USA.
As an observer of the relationships between the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Native Americans whose welfare they were created to protect (at least on paper) I am grateful for Mr. Treuer's story of the impact on individuals of the BIA's "Relocation Project" of the 1950's and 1960's. The ethnic cleansing efforts of the settlement period and the Indian Wars were closely followed by the long reservation tortures that included, starvation, lousy health care and the removal of children from their families during the boarding school years. Boarding school children in many institutions were not allowed to see their families, experience family life, speak their language or participate in the rites of their religion and culture. Generations of Native American children in those institutions were physically and verbally abused, demoralized, then returned to reservations. Most survived but only the strongest thrived.
The last forced boarding school children in our area were of my parents' generation. I knew many of the tough and outstandingly intelligent ones who managed to thrive, but only a few who thrived without assimilating into white communities. In my generation--I went to college in the 60's--relocation and a thoroughly unhealthy Indian Health Service were the primary forms of ethnic cleansing. Native Americans were dumped without adequate training and support into areas of substandard housing in out cities and expected to fend for themselves. On the reservations BIA Health Services provided health care laced with distaste and bad practice. Again only the very intelligent and strongest individuals survived and thrived.
Perhaps, since the BIA's mismanagement of Native American properties and accounts has been acknowledged there has been some reform, but the state of BIA schools on reservations certainly indicates that if the starvation of bodies is no longer the goal of the BIA hierarchy, the starvation of the minds and souls of Native American children remains an important goal of our federal government.
Treuer tells is like it is for many Urban Native Americans. They don't need to read this book to understand. Those of us who live prejudice free as part of the majority white society do need to think of the impact that the programs of our dominant society have on those who are visibly different.
4 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
A Look Into A Culture That Few Americans Have Seen
By A Customer
David Treuer's hand paints a landscape that is as bleak a reality as we have here in America. His characters that inhabit this modern Native American tale are so real you can see them clearly in your mind's eye. In 1969, I passed through many towns in Southern Canada bordering on the Great Lakes States and was shocked to see the level of disfunction in our Native American brothers and sisters. This novel reminded me deeply of my memories of these places and how forgotten and isolated these people are and what the result is of this abandonment. For a first novel, I think we have a lot more to look forward to from this young, and, very gifted writer.
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