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Published Jun 2017
288 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
The debut novel from the bestselling author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and Leaving Before the Rains Come.
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.
"Fuller's keen sense of engagement with a land 'to which you now don't belong,' and her place as an outsider, make her a sympathetic storyteller. Her prose shimmers and vibrates with life in this excellent novel." – Publishers Weekly
"Fuller's kinship with Lakota traditions in this novel is palpable." – Booklist
"Fluidly written, with no sanctimony and plenty of dark humor" – Library Journal
"A lyrical tale of life on the Rez... A tender, wry homage to Native American wisdom and lore." - Kirkus
"Alexandra Fuller has always been a brave writer. We count on her bare-boned, carefully-crafted truths laced with wit and wisdom. But in her debut novel, Fuller calls upon her imagination to explore what binds us together rather than what pulls us apart. Quiet Until the Thaw is a literary risk and a revelation." - Terry Tempest Williams, author of The Hour of Land
"One moment I am crying in sorrow, the next laughing and on the same page I am cringing. Honest fiction that exposes the reality of the difficulties of the Lakota Way." - Richard B. Williams, former president and CEO of the American Indian College Fund, and member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe
This information about Quiet Until the Thaw was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Alexandra Fuller is the author of four memoirs, including Don't Lets Go To The Dogs Tonight – a New York Times Notable Book for 2002, the 2002 Booksense Best Non-fiction book, a finalist for the Guardian's First Book Award and the winner of the 2002 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize – and the New York Times-bestselling Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, two books of non-fiction, and the novel Quiet Until The Thaw. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, National Geographic, Granta, The New York Times, The Guardian and The Financial Times.
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