Week 16: Winter in the Blood by James Welch (Penguin, 1974, paperback)
After reading Fools Crow early this year and really appreciating it, I picked up this first novel by Welch. It is a much more personal novel in the sense that instead of the historical scope and details of the later novel, this one is an internal exploration of a single contemporary Indian character.
The novel covers a few days in the life of a young, lost Blackfoot Indian on a reservation in Montana. He lives with his mother and grandmother, spending his days helping around the house and drinking. The main impetus for the plot is his girlfriend, who has left town. The narrator seeks in her in several towns the area and runs into an odd assortment of characters, most either drunk or working bars. The narrator’s drive to find the girlfriend is really unmotivated—the experiences in town are more about existential wandering. He ultimately ends up back on the reservation, where he reveals his past—the tragic death of this brother, the drunken death of this father, and the adulterous past of this grandmother.
The second half of the novel covers Satrapi’s move, alone, to France to continue her education. She struggles in this new culture without a family, eventually ending up living on the streets for a short time. She experiences the typical growing pains of any young woman—questions about looks, about fitting it with her contemporaries—along with coming from a different culture. Eventually she returns home, seeking solace, and finds how much she (and her family) have changed. She marries, but it doesn’t last and we are left at the end with a young woman still changing.
I most appreciated the times when the narrator was dealing with his and his family’s history. I was engaged in these memories and felt we gained some insight into the character. When the novel turns to his existential wanderings, fueled by alcohol, I found myself losing interest. I didn’t find that it gave me anything of interest in relation to the character, nor were the characters he met of any interest. I’m not drawn to novels of characters wandering from place to place, making few decisions, and getting nowhere. I only need a bit of these scenes to appreciate how “lost” a character is.
Unless you are interested in expanding your appreciation for Welch’s writing, I wouldn’t recommend this novel either as an interesting work nor as a necessary American Indian work. I’m looking forward to reading more of his later works, where he honed his writing.
Next week . . . Island Folk: The People of Isle Royale by Peter Oikarinen.