House Made of Dawn (P.S.)

Description

The magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of a stranger in his native land

A young Native American, Abel has come home from a foreign war to find himself caught between two worlds. The first is the world of his father's, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the land, and the ancient rites and traditions of his people. But the other world -- modern, industrial America -- pulls at Abel, demanding his loyalty, claiming his soul, goading him into a destructive, compulsive cycle of dissipation and disgust. And the young man, torn in two, descends into hell.

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The Man Made of Words: Essays, Stories, Passages

Description

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The winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel, House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momaday is renowned as an influential Native American writer. In this collection of essays he turns his attention to the differences between oral and written cultures; to places he has visited and lived; and to the weighty issues of government Indian policies and the enduring damage they continue to inflict. He writes movingly of his Kiowa forebears, and he teaches us great lessons about mankind and its relationship to nature. Momaday is a deeply thoughtful observer and a graceful writer, and the essays in The Man Made of Words are both provocative and elegant.

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The Way to Rainy Mountain

Description

First published in paperback by UNM Press in 1976, The Way to Rainy Mountain has sold over 200,000 copies.

"The paperback edition of The Way to Rainy Mountain was first published twenty-five years ago. One should not be surprised, I suppose, that it has remained vital, and immediate, for that is the nature of story. And this is particularly true of the oral tradition, which exists in a dimension of timelessness. I was first told these stories by my father when I was a child. I do not know how long they had existed before I heard them. They seem to proceed from a place of origin as old as the earth.

"The stories in The Way to Rainy Mountain are told in three voices. The first voice is the voice of my father, the ancestral voice, and the voice of the Kiowa oral tradition. The second is the voice of historical commentary. And the third is that of personal reminiscence, my own voice. There is a turning and returning of myth, history, and memoir throughout, a narrative wheel that is as sacred as language itself."--from the new Preface

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In the Bear's House

Description

You are the dark shape I find
On nights of the spilling moon,
Pale in the pool of heaven.
You are spirit, you are that
Which summons me and confirms
My passage. You know my name...
--from "Revenant"

N. Scott Momaday's unique connection to the beauty and spirituality of the natural world surfaces in all of his works, from his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel House Made of Dawn to his more recent collection In the Presence of the Sun. Yet In the Bear's House is Momaday's intensely personal quest to understand the spirit of the wilderness embodied in the animal image of Bear.

Intimately linked to Bear since his childhood, Momaday searches for this elusive yet omnipresent spirit who is both the keeper and the manifestation of the wild mountains, rivers, and plains. Exploring themes of anguish, forgiveness, and belief, Momaday journeys from the bitter Siberian taiga to the blackening night sky to deep within his own timeless essence, and reveals Bear to be both a radiant presence and spiritual restorative. In the first section, Momaday uses dialogues between the original Bear, Urset, and his creator, Yahweh, to probe the troubling consolation of language, the wonder of prayer, and the grace of storytelling. The bold, finely wrought language of the poems and passages collected here evoke the despair, bewilderment, and valor of the hunted Bear as well as the ultimate redemption and fulfillment to be found in the ritual of death. The provocative original paintings throughout In the Bear's House powerfully enhance our interpretation of Bear by suggesting his many incarnations.

Through both word and image, Momaday brings us deep into his vision of Bear's house and further distinguishes himself as one of the most luminous visionaries of our time.

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The Ancient Child: A Novel

Description

In his first novel since the Pulitzer Prize-winning House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momaday shapes the ancient Kiowa myth of a boy who turned into a bear into a timeless American classic. The Ancient Child juxtaposes Indian lore and Wild West legend into a hypnotic, often lyrical contemporary novel--the story of Locke Setman, known as Set, a Native American raised far from the reservation by his adoptive father. Set feels a strange aching in his soul and, returning to tribal lands for the funeral of his grandmother, is drawn irresistibly to the fabled bear-boy. When he meets Grey, a beautiful young medicine woman with a visionary gift, his world is turned upside down. Here is a magical saga of one man's tormented search for his identity--a quintessential American novel, and a great one.

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The Names (Sun Tracks)

Description

Of all of the works of N. Scott Momaday, The Names may be the most personal. A memoir of his boyhood in Oklahoma and the Southwest, it is also described by Momaday as "an act of the imagination. When I turn my mind to my early life, it is the imaginative part of it that comes first and irresistibly into reach, and of that part I take hold." Complete with family photos, The Names is a book that will captivate readers who wish to experience the Native American way of life.

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