Reservation Blues (edit title)

Erika W edited the summary of Reservation Blues Wednesday, November 18 2009.

• Reservation Blues is a fictional story about a Native American man named Thomas Builds-The-Fire, a Spokane Indian story teller, who is given a guitar by a famous musician, neither white nor Native American, famous bluesman Robert Johnson. With this guitar Thomas creates a band composed of himself and two local misfits, Victor and Junior. None of the men have any musical talent, until Chess and Checkers Warm Water join the band, yet the guitar turns out to be possessed by the devil and will play beautiful music, though it leaves scars on the hands of the player and takes control of them. No matter how you try to rid yourself of the guitar it will always find its way back. The guitar can be broken, burned, or buried and it will still find its way back to its owner’s arms.
  After seeking the help of a shamaness and musical teacher Big Mom, the band performs several small shows before going to Calvary Records in New York City. There their performance is a major flop. The record company then decides to sign the band’s white groupies and creating their own “Indians” since the real ones were unmanageable.

Shelfari edited the description of Reservation Blues Sunday, August 2 2009.

• Winner of the American Book Award and a critically acclaimed national best seller, Reservation Blues continues to find new and adoring readers in academic and popular circles alike. In 1931, Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul to the devil, receiving legendary blues skills in return. He went on to record only twenty-nine songs before being murdered on August 16, 1938. In 1992, however, Johnson suddenly reappears on the Spokane Indian Reservation and meets Thomas Builds-the-Fire, the misfit storyteller of the Spokane Tribe. When Johnson passes his enchanted instrument to Thomas—lead singer of the rock-and-roll band Coyote Springs—a magical odyssey begins that will take the band from reservation bars to small-town taverns, from the cement trails of Seattle to the concrete canyons of Manhattan. Sherman Alexie imaginatively mixes narrative, newspaper excerpts, songs, journal entries, visions, radio interviews, and dreams to explore the effects of Christianity on Native Americans in the late twentieth century. In addition, he examines the impact of cultural assimilation on the relationships between Indian women and Indian men. Reservation Blues is a painful, humorous, and ultimately redemptive symphony about God and indifference, faith and alcoholism, family and hunger, sex and death.

Shelfari edited the contributors of Reservation Blues Wednesday, July 22 2009.

• Added a contributor: Sherman Alexie: (Primary Author)