Ghost Dances
Proving Up on the Great Plains
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Growing up in South Dakota, Josh Garrett-Davis knew he would leave. But as a young adult, he kept going back -- in dreams and reality and by way of books. With this beautifully written narrative about a seemingly empty but actually rich and complex place, he has reclaimed his childhood, his unusual family, and the Great Plains.
Among the subjects and people that bring his Midwestern Plains to life are the destruction and resurgence of the American bison; Native American "Ghost Dancers," who attempted to ward off destruction by supernatural means; the political allegory to be found in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; and current attempts by ecologists to "rewild" the Plains, complete with cheetahs.
Garrett-Davis infuses the narrative with stories of his family as well -- including his great-great-grandparents' twenty-year sojourn in Nebraska as homesteaders and his progressive Methodist cousin Ruth, a missionary in China ousted by Mao's revolution. Ghost Dances is a fluid combination of memoir and history and reportage that reminds us our roots matter.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Alienation and authenticity commingle in this memoiristic meditation on America's lonesome midsection. Growing up the son of self-consciously lefty parents in conservative South Dakota, Garrett-Davis "didn't live where belonged"; adding to his sense of estrangement were his mom's lesbianism, his bouts of bedwetting, and a lifelong infatuation with punk rock. He entwines these confessional travails with colorful historical vignettes and profiles: the slaughter of the buffalo (and one bison's glorious redemption in a Mexican bullfight); the 19th-century Indian ghost-dance movement and the Wounded Knee massacre; prairie populist William Jennings Bryan, prairie homophobe Fred Phelps, and prairie litterateur Willa Cather; a distant cousin's journey from a Plains girlhood to a career as a Methodist missionary and peace activist. While some narrative themes feel forced (he likens the custody battle his divorced parents fought over him to the legal battle fought between fossil-hunters and Native American landowners over a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton), Garrett-Davis writes evocatively of "the latent fury in this monotonous landscape" and finds some juicy tufts of lore to graze on in his meanders. Photos.
Customer Reviews
Still Here
FUGAZI is so PUNK!