Quiet Until the Thaw: A Novel
Written by Alexandra Fuller
Narrated by Alma Cuervo
3.5/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation, South Dakota. Two Native American cousins, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson, though bound by blood and by land, find themselves at odds as they grapple with the implications of their shared heritage. When escalating anger toward the injustices, historical and current, inflicted upon the Lakota people by the federal government leads to tribal divisions and infighting, the cousins go in separate directions: Rick chooses the path of peace; You Choose, violence.
Years pass, and as You Choose serves time in prison, Rick finds himself raising twin baby boys orphaned at birth in his meadow. As the twins mature from infants to young men, Rick immerses the boys in their ancestry, telling wonderful and terrible tales of how the whole world came to be and affirming their place in the universe as the result of all who have come before and will come behind. But when You Choose returns to the reservation after three decades behind bars, his anger manifests, forever disrupting the lives of Rick and the boys.
A complex tale that spans generations and geography, Quiet Until the Thaw conjures the implications of an oppressed history, how we are bound not just to immediate family but to all who have come before and will come after us, and, most of all, to the notion that everything was always, and is always, connected.
Alexandra Fuller
Alexandra Fuller was born in England in 1969. She moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) with her family when she was two. After that country’s war of independence (1980) her family moved first to Malawi and then Zambia. She came to the United States in 1994. Her book Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize in 2002 and a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award. Scribbling the Cat won the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage in 2006.
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Reviews for Quiet Until the Thaw
30 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I've read all of Alexandra Fuller's memoirs...in fact, I've read Don't Let's Go to the Dog Tonight at least twice. It haunts me.This book is Ms. Fuller's first novel. It tells the story of two American Indian boys raised by the reservation's resident midwife (who is the grandmother of one of them). As they mature, they choose different paths in life, with one becoming a respected elder and healer and the other choosing a more violent, destructive lifestyle. The story is told in a series of very short chapters that not only tell what is happening, but brings a cultural or historical perspective at the same time. From that perspective, it's very well done. I wonder why Ms. Fuller chose to write about a culture and society she is not part of. I don't think she's done a bad job of it, but it is part of what fascinates me about this author. In her first memoir, she seemed unaware of the racism among white African settlers; she found nothing unusual in having a toddler clean rifles; and seemed detached from her younger sister's death. Again, she is writing as an outsider. Like her other writings, this book will stay with me both for the story, and for what it says about the author.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I like Alexandra Fuller's memoirs a lot. They are some of my favorite books. This was her first novel and it centered on the plight of Native Americans. Other reviewers mentioned how she was writing about something she knew nothing about. Maybe I'm oversimplifying it but I think there can be comparisons made to her first hand knowledge of civil war in Africa. The writing style was interesting--rather brief. She made some rather poignant observations as well as some that seemed rather cliche to me. Overall it was good and I liked it.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Story of two Indian boys, abandoned by their mothers at birth, and raised by a tribe midwife. Somewhat disjoined way of telling the story, but I could feel the voice of a native storyteller throughout.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I didn't realize until after I read this that it wasn't even written by an indigenous author, which really explains a lot. The story seemed mostly inauthentic and jumped around so much as to make it distracting. Two Native American cousins, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson grow up in similar circumstances yet turn out to have vastly different futures. One becomes a drunk looking for trouble and the other finds himself in Vietnam and then later raising two orphan boys. Far more than just their two lives intersecting there are short vignettes about their friends and others struggling on the reservation. Too jumpy and sporadic. There are good parts, they are just buried.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Worth reading this book to come to know Rick Overlooking Horse. A couple of the chapters knocked my socks off but overall I kept wondering why Fuller was writing about Native Americans. Preferred her other books.