In this vivid and moving book, Orange articulates the challenges and complexities not only of Native Americans, but also of...
Orange’s debut novel offers a kaleidoscopic look at Native American life in Oakland, California, through the experiences and perspectives of 12 characters.
An aspiring documentary filmmaker, a young man who has taught himself traditional dance by watching YouTube, another lost in the bulk of his enormous body—these are just a few of the point-of-view characters in this astonishingly wide-ranging book, which culminates with an event called the Big Oakland Powwow. Orange, who grew up in the East Bay and is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, knows the territory, but this is no work of social anthropology; rather, it is a deep dive into the fractured diaspora of a community that remains, in many ways, invisible to many outside of it. “We made powwows because we needed a place to be together,” he writes. “Something intertribal, something old, something to make us money, something we could work toward, for our jewelry, our songs, our dances, our drum.” The plot of the book is almost impossible to encapsulate, but that’s part of its power. At the same time, the narrative moves forward with propulsive force. The stakes are high: For Jacquie Red Feather, on her way to meet her three grandsons for the first time, there is nothing as conditional as sobriety: “She was sober again,” Orange tells us, “and ten days is the same as a year when you want to drink all the time.” For Daniel Gonzales, creating plastic guns on a 3-D printer, the only lifeline is his dead brother, Manny, to whom he writes at a ghostly Gmail account. In its portrayal of so-called “Urban Indians,” the novel recalls David Treuer’s The Hiawatha, but the range, the vision, is all its own. What Orange is saying is that, like all people, Native Americans don’t share a single identity; theirs is a multifaceted landscape, made more so by the sins, the weight, of history. That some of these sins belong to the characters alone should go without saying, a point Orange makes explicit in the novel’s stunning, brutal denouement. “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them,” James Baldwin wrote in a line Orange borrows as an epigraph to one of the book’s sections; this is the inescapable fate of every individual here.
In this vivid and moving book, Orange articulates the challenges and complexities not only of Native Americans, but also of America itself.Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-52037-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Platzer writes confidently about marriage and illness, but there's too much else going on.
A New York couple faces medical and personal difficulties during the national malaise of the Trump years.
When we meet Tess, a Broadway understudy and mother of two, she is celebrating her 37th birthday alone in a bar. Eight months ago, shortly after she confessed to cheating on him with a fellow actor, her husband, David, fell off a long ladder at an upstate New York apple-picking orchard, and his head injuries resulted in a debilitating, long-term vestibular disorder (also suffered by the author). Once filled with so much “buoyancy and good cheer” that he would dance upon getting up in the morning, now David feels leaden and can barely function. As he writes in a journal Tess reads without permission, "Some days I think I’m lucky to be with someone who’s suffered. Seen what she’s seen and survived true depression. Other days I think I need someone less damaged, someone who can devote herself more fully to helping me.” The journal also documents David's desperate visits to alternative practitioners that ultimately do nothing but ruin the family financially. There are many more complications—too many—some having to do with Tess’ past, other with David’s best friend, Tazio (whom David nursed back to health after liver failure and whom Tess is in love with), and Tazio's fiancee, Angelica. Tazio is an art student–turned-politico, and his story arc contains, among other things, a deep dive into the John Edwards campaign and a position in the Trump administration. As he makes the rounds of the male and female characters, Platzer (Bed-Stuy Is Burning, 2017) often seems to be searching for answers himself. For example, after Tess and Angelica attempt to resolve their past traumas by pairing up for #MeToo type confrontations, the author tries to evoke Tess' state of mind with a series of questions: “Maybe…seeing your father kill your mother is something you can’t ever get over. Maybe it is worse than rape, especially if you loved your rapist.” Elsewhere: “What if Tazio is planning on killing Trump?” Fewer storylines and less topical content might have helped.
Platzer writes confidently about marriage and illness, but there's too much else going on.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-8077-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Readers craving some nod at redemption may have to be satisfied with rough justice.
A bleak drama of rural America that offers grim lessons but minimal hope.
In a small-town park, Izzy and Junie, two 12-year-old girls, meet a grisly end. Junie’s fading consciousness sheds no light on the murderer’s identity. This is Engel’s second adult novel (after The Roanoke Girls, 2017) to unfold in a meth-ridden, dying town. The setting is somewhere in Missouri, but this could be any American town, in any area left behind by the concentration of wealth and the exodus of youth. In towns like the aptly christened Barren Springs, many young people never make it out, and Junie’s single mother, Eve Taggert, is one of these. The deck is stacked against Eve and her brother, Cal, from birth—in a trailer in a remote “holler” to a drug-addicted mother who starves them, abuses them, but manages to instill in them fierce family loyalty and an implacable eye-for-an-eye mentality. Now in their 30s, Cal and Eve have succeeded up to a point: Each has a small apartment in town; Cal is a cop, and Eve works as a waitress. Thanks to Eve’s efforts, Junie had a modicum of a normal life and a best friend, Izzy, daughter of Zach and Jenny, who by Barren Springs standards are middle class. Through a fog of grief, Eve vows to find the killer and begins tracking the short list of suspects. These include her violent ex-boyfriend, Jimmy Ray, and his meth-cooking sidekick, strip club bartender Matt. An unforeshadowed revelation about Zach halfway through adds nothing to the suspense—instead, we are brought up short, wondering how a first-person narrator like Eve, blunt, plainspoken, and obsessed with the truth, could conceal this glaring fact from herself for half the book. In fact, her unerring instincts will lead to a completely unexpected conclusion. These pages are replete with lessons about the choices women have in such environments—that is to say, none, except to toughen up or give up.
Readers craving some nod at redemption may have to be satisfied with rough justice.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4595-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
