Alexie, Sherman

Presents a selection of poetry by various American authors.

"Thunder Boy Jr. wants a normal name...one that's all his own. Dad is known as Big Thunder, but Little Thunder doesn't want to share a name"--.

Presents twenty-two intertwining tales depicting the determination of contemporary life on the Spokane Indian Reservation.

Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

Contents: Every little hurricane -- A drug called tradition -- Because my father always said he was the only Indian who saw Jimi Hendrix play "The star-spangled banner" at Woodstock -- Crazy Horse dreams -- The only traffic signal on the Reservation doesn't flash red anymore -- Amusements -- This is what it means to say Phoenix, Arizona -- The fun house -- All I wanted to do was dance -- The trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire -- Distances -- Jesus Christ's half-brother is alive and well on the Spokane Indian Reservation -- A train is an order of occurance designed to lead to some result -- A good story -- The first annual all-Indian horseshoe pitch and barbecue -- Imagining the Reservation -- The approximate size of my favorite tumor -- Indian education -- The Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in Heaven -- Family portrait -- Somebody kept saying powwow -- Witnesses, secret and not -- Flight --Junior Polatkin's Wild West Show.

Paints a complex, grimly ironic portrait of life in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation.

Legendary bluesman, Robert Johnson, arrives at a Spokane Indian reservation and passes his guitar to a young boy leading them around the country sounding chords of celebration and survival.

A murderer, dubbed the Indian Killer, is stalking and scalping white men in Seattle, and John Smith, a Native American man who was adopted by a white couple at birth and who is slowly descending into madness due to his alienation from either the white or Indian culture, seems to be a likely suspect.