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Summary
Summary
When Leslie Silko's Almanac of the Dead was published, The New York Times called it a passionate indictment...that burns at an apocalyptic pitch. The flame burns even brighter with Gardens in the Dunes -- a magical combination of childhood idyll and bitter reality eloquently depicts the jungles of Brazil, and the great cities of the East. A child of an ancient Indian tribe, Indigo is orphaned when soldiers raid and destroy her town. She is adopted by an American family, but the white education forced upon her clashes with the centuries-old wisdom of her people. Her new family expects her to abandon the deep, instinctive knowledge that has become a part of her soul. But Indigo cannot forget her past -- and she will change all their lives before finally returning to her own. A masterful work of literature evoking the writing of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, this brilliantly imagined novel penetrates the conflict between Native Americans and the American culture in which they are obliged to live.
Author Notes
Leslie Marmon Silko was born in 1948 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Growing up on a reservation, she went to Bureau of Indian Affairs schools before attending the University of New Mexico.
She taught at the Navajo Community College in Arizona and is a professor of English at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
Marmon has written short stories, poetry, plays and novels. Her books include Laguna Woman, Ceremony and Yellow Woman.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Silko (Almanac of the Dead, etc.) is widely considered a master of Native American literature, but in this third novel, as always, the poet, short-story writer and essayist soars beyond the simpler categorizations that might circumscribe her virtuosic and visionary work. Indigo is one of the last Sand Lizard people, who for centuries have cultivated the desert dunes beyond the river. Young Indigo's story opens like a folk tale, outside place and time, but gradually circumstances become plain. It's the turn of the century, Arizona is on the verge of statehood and an aqueduct is being constructed to feed water from the Colorado River to Los Angeles. Displaced peoples strip the desert gardens, and Grandma Fleet takes Indigo and Sister Salt to Needles. There the girls' mother has joined the encampment of women dancing to summon the Messiah, who, to Indigo's wonderment, appears with his Holy Mother and his 11 children. Soldiers raid the celebration; soon Indigo and Sister Salt are captured and separated, and Indigo is sent to school in Riverside. She escapes and is found hiding in a garden by intellectual iconoclast Hattie, who adopts the child and takes her first to New York, then to Europe. The novel, expanding far beyond its initial setting and historical themes, is structured around intricate patterns of color and styles of gardening: the desert dunes are pale yellow and orange; in Italy, a black garden is formed from thousands of hybrid black gladioli. Significantly, there's also a parrot named RainbowÄalong with a monkey named Linnaeus and a dog circus. Silko's integration of glorious details into her many vivid settings and intense characters is a triumph of the storyteller's art, which this gifted and magical novelist has never demonstrated more satisfyingly than she does here. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
There are many wonderful moments in this ambitious tale of Native America in conflict with paternalistic white culture'unquestionably the best fiction yet from Silko. Its settings are the southwestern and northeastern US, England, and Europe near the end of the 19th century, and its resonant theme is the imperfect adaptation of a girl of the (Arizona) Sand Lizard Indian tribe and an educated woman seeking independence to each other's starkly contrasting ``worlds.'' The story begins (and, sadly, during its first hundred pages, sags) with a detailed account of the survival of preadolescent Indigo and her older ``Sister Salt'' when a massacre of their people by US cavalry leaves them orphaned, to be raised and tutored by their resourceful grandmother. When the beloved ``Granny Fleet'' dies, the sisters are captured, sent to white schools, and separated'after which the innocent Indigo enchants, and is effectively adopted by, Hattie Palmer, the young wife of the much older Edward, a botanist and explorer driven by both scientific and mercenary ambitions. During travels with the Palmers back east and abroad (climaxing with their viewing, in an Italian village, of a cache of carved stone ``fertility figures''), Indigo's ``education'' acquaints her with such alien commonplaces of white culture as sexual irregularity and hypocrisy, Christianity's strong moralistic component, and ``civilization's'' proprietary attitude toward the natural world. A chastened return to Arizona, and Indigo's (not quite believable) reunion with her sister, now an unwed mother, occasions an awkwardly overplotted series of ironic reversals that leave the disillusioned Hattie (easily the best character here) only a mocking simulacrum of the ``liberation'' she has pursued. Given that Silko (Almanac of the Dead, 1991, etc.) is less a novelist than a lyrical observer and celebrant of Native American life, this daunting fiction is, despite several longueurs and narrative miscalculations, both a thoughtful exploration of the incompatibility of dissimilar traditions and an absorbing reading experience.
Library Journal Review
Silko (Almanac of the Dead, LJ 10/15/91) has produced a work that touches on several cultures, belief systems, and issues, the most important being respect for the earth and all its life forms. To this end, she presents the life of a young Sand Lizard Indian girl, one of the last of her tribe. She travels from her ancient homeland in Arizona to California, New York, England, Italy, and back to Arizona, beginning and ending her journey in the "garden in the dunes," where she lives off the land with reverence and care. In her travels, she is exposed to people who treat her with contempt, condescension, and curiosity as well as complete respect; she learns about ancient Celtic and Roman cultures and beliefs; and she sees the earth raped to accommodate Western expansion. Silko exhibits an amazing fluency with gardens and plant life of all kinds and a substantial knowledge of world mythology. A worthwhile addition to any library. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/98.]ÄRebecca A. Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.