Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2017
288 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
Good Friday on the Rez is a dramatic page-turner, an incredible true story that tracks the torment and miraculous resurrection of Native American pride, spirituality, and culture - how things got to be the way they are, where they are going, and why we should care.
Good Friday on the Rez introduces readers to places and people that author, writer, and entrepreneur David Bunnell encounters during his one day, 280-mile road trip from his boyhood Nebraska hometown to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to visit his longtime friend, Vernell White Thunder, a full-blooded Oglala Lakota, descendant of a long line of prominent chiefs and medicine men.
This captivating narrative is part memoir and part history. Bunnell shares treasured memories of his time living on and teaching at the reservation. Sometimes raw and sometimes uplifting, Bunnell looks back to expose the difficult life and experiences faced by the descendants of Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, and Sitting Bull while also illuminating their courageous resiliency.
Substantive and at times disturbing, Bunnell reflects back to his time on the rez during the violent 70s when he smuggled food to radical Indians at Wounded Knee. Peppered with Vernell White Thunder's spellbinding stories of growing up in a one-room log house with his medicine man grandfather, Bunnell's begs the reader to join in on the poignant conversations about present-day Native Americans.
"Starred Review. Melancholy and fascinating ... White Thunder's family anecdotes and successful efforts to merge his heritage and the modern world, as Bunnell, explains, provide an inspiring counterpoint to the nightmare of history." - Publishers Weekly
"This informative account should be placed alongside all books on Native American history and culture. It deserves to be read by all, particularly in light of the recent Dakota Access Pipeline protests." - Library Journal
"A well-intended memoir with forgivable flaws in the service of the greater good of delivering a portrait of reservation life over the course of half a century." - Kirkus
This information about Good Friday on the Rez was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
David Hugh Bunnell is a writer, photographer, editor and publisher best known as the founder of magazines, websites and trade shows. He has authored hundreds of articles and several books. Through his company, Bunnell Media Inc., he has created and managed social media marketing for dozens of clients. He is a longtime active member and former Director of the Northern California ACLU, and founder of the nonprofit Andrew Fluegelman Foundation. Bunnell died on October, 2016.
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