Books › Green grass, running water
Green grass, running water
First published 1993 · 469 pages
A playful, mythic tapestry where creation stories and contemporary lives collide to rewrite history with a wry smile.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting around a fire listening to a master storyteller who keeps interrupting themselves with a joke that turns out to be the most important part of the tale. The narrative flows with a meandering, river-like pace, effortlessly weaving together mundane contemporary struggles with grand, trickster-driven creation myths. It is deeply funny, yet its humor is a sharp, subversive tool used to dismantle colonial narratives and Western literary tropes. The prose is conversational and rhythmic, wrapping the reader in a warm, earthy atmosphere where the magical and the everyday coexist. It will thoroughly delight readers who appreciate magical realism, biting satire, and stories that celebrate the enduring, transformative power of a well-told story.
- Mood
- mythic
- earthy
- humorous
- contemplative
- Tone
- wry
- satirical
- playful
- subversive
- warm
- Pace
- meandering
- Themes
- the power of storytelling · cultural collision · Indigenous identity · subversion of colonial narratives · interconnectedness
- The writing
- Conversational and rhythmic, deeply rooted in oral storytelling traditions that seamlessly blend the mundane with the magical.
- The arc
- Moves from fragmented cultural displacement to a warm, resilient sense of communal and cosmic interconnectedness.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love sharp, warm-hearted satire and magical realism that playfully dismantles Western historical tropes.
Content notes
- racism
- colonialism
- systemic oppression
About the book
Strong, Sassy women and hard-luck hardheaded men, all searching for the middle ground between Native American tradition and the modern world, perform an elaborate dance of approach and avoidance in this magical, rollicking tale by Cherokee author Thomas King. Alberta is a university professor who would like to trade her two boyfriends for a baby but no husband; Lionel is forty and still sells televisions for a patronizing boss; Eli and his log cabin stand in the way of a profitable dam project. These three—and others—are coming to the Blackfoot reservation for the Sun Dance and there they will encounter four Indian elders and their companion, the trickster Coyote—and nothing in the small town of Blossom will be the same again...
Description from Open Library.
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