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Searching... Salem Main Library | Harrison, J. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
From her home on the California coast, Dalva hears the broad silence of the Nebraska prairie where she was born and longs for the son she gave up for adoption years before. Beautiful, fearless, tormented, at forty-five she has lived a life of lovers and adventures. Now, Dalva begins a journey that will take her back to the bosom of her family, to the half-Sioux lover of her youth, and to a pioneering great-grandfather whose journals recount the bloody annihilation of the Plains Indians. On the way, she discovers a story that stretches from East to West, from the Civil War to Wounded Knee and Vietnam -- and finds the balm to heal her wild and wounded soul.
Author Notes
James Thomas Harrison was born on December 11, 1937 in Grayling, Michigan. After receiving a B.A. in comparative literature from Michigan State University in 1960 and a M.A. in comparative literature from the same school in 1964, he briefly taught English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
During his lifetime, he wrote 14 collections of poetry, 21 volumes of fiction, two books of essays, a memoir, and a children's book. His collections of poetry included Plain Song, The Theory and Practice of Rivers, Songs of Unreason, and Dead Man's Float. He received a Guggenheim fellowship for his poetry in 1969. His essays on food, much of which first appeared in Esquire, was collected in the 2001 book, The Raw and the Cooked. His memoir, Off to the Side, was published in 2002.
His first novel, Wolf, was published in 1971. His other works of fiction included A Good Day to Die, Farmer, The Road Home, Julip, and The Ancient Minstrel. His novel, Legends of the Fall, was adapted into a feature film starring Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt. Harrison wrote the screenplay for the movie. His novel, Dalva, was adapted as a made-for-television movie starring Rod Steiger and Farrah Fawcett. He died on March 26, 2016 at the age of 78.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A cast of fascinating characters populates the Nebraska farmland where Harrison's fine new novel is set. First among these is Dalva Northridge, a passionate and unconventional woman who, at 45, begins searching for the illegitimate son she bore 30 years earlier. While flashbacks explore Dalva's teenage romance with her son's father, a half-Sioux youth, the story is carried forward through Dalva's current relationships with her wealthy family and with Michael, a history professor. The middle portion of the book, narrated by the alcoholic and debauched Michael, brings a shift in mood. Michael, who is living at the Northridge family ranch while researching journals left by Dalva's great-grandfather, proceeds toward his own incapacitation at a Rabelaisian pitch. Woven through Michael's narrative are excerpts from the journals, which have a great relevance to the history of Nebraska's Native Americans. Harrison (Sundog) offers almost an embarrassment of riches here. Digressing stories of a large number of characterswhile they add to the rich texture of the novelsometimes deflect attention from Dalva herself. That is a small caveat, however, about this lyrical and atmospheric book, which is entertaining, moving and memorable. (March) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Harrison (Sundog, Warlock, etc.) has only mixed success here with a female character, but otherwise taps deep and true with this portrait of a family on the Nebraska plains. Dalva Northridge, narrator of the book's first and final sections, is a moneyed superwoman--calm genius in the kitchen, sexual, beautiful and competent. She grew up free on the spacious family farm under the enlightened care of her smart, widowed mother Naomi and her part-Sioux grandfather. At 15, she made love to the half-Sioux cowboy, Duane, whom her grandfather had taken in, and got pregnant. When Duane disappeared, her grandfather let on that her love was really her own half-brother. Dalva gave up the child for adoption but nursed a sad longing for Duane (the nightmare terrain of their brief reunion is the emotional centerpiece of the novel). Decades later, Dalva's back home, this time with her sometime-lover Michael, an overweight and alcoholic historian whose abject begging has convinced her to grant him access to her missionary great-grandfather's journals. Michael, narrator of the book's middle section, has some near-uproarious adventures with the locals (a spree at the lazy Daze Tavern and a silly speech at a Rotary Club lunch). He also traces, through the Northridge patriarch's lyrical journals, this gentle man's post-Civl War wanderings through the territories--befriending Sioux warriors, blurring his Christian faith, experimenting with Indian mysticism and nearly losing his mind. Placid Dalva is an unreal (if appealing) character: she swallows her considerable pain, and even her breakdowns are gracious and shot through with connections to nature. As for Michael, he's an amusing caricature of the helpless academic and a neat foil for the vivid journals. Strong landscapes, hilariously sketched walk-on characters and antic detail give richness and humor to a novel that flirts with being a romantic paean to the prairie and the Sioux. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Harrison as a novelist continues to grow deeper and more beautiful; the distance between his latest novel and the one before it, the riveting Sundog (Booklist 80:1378 Je 1 84), is immense. The diamond-in-the-rough elegance of his style and his superb mesh of sarcastic humor and almost blushing sensitivity when it comes to creating characters have never been more beguiling than in this exquisitely carved portrait of the life and loves of 45-year-old Dalva, who is in search of the child she gave away for adoption immediately after his birth. She finds her son at novel's end, and in the process Harrison evokes with loving detail both Dalva's ancestry in the late-nineteenth-century west and the fortitude to stand by her actions and attitudes that is her familial legacy. BH. [CIP] 87-24442
Library Journal Review
Dalva has traveled the world doing a variety of jobs, alternately haunted and driven by men: a half-breed Sioux, her half-brother, whose child she bore, and gave up for adoption, at 16; an obsessed great-grandfather, who came to Nebraska as a missionary; an alcoholic college professor who uses her as a crutch as he blunders toward tenure. The reconciliation of the various elements in her life is precipitated by a return to her Midwestern roots, where she acknowledges her family's eccentricities and her own wasted years. In the process a vivid panorama of Nebraska history is revealed through her own poignant memories and the tormented journals of her great-grandfather. A compelling novel, essential for fiction collections.Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. at Carbondale Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Book I Dalva | p. 1 |
| Book II Michael | p. 107 |
| Book III Going Home | p. 215 |