Quiet Until the Thaw: A Novel

by Alexandra Fuller

Overview

The debut novel from the bestselling author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and Leaving Before the Rains Come. 
 
“Awe inspiring . . . An ardent, original, and beautifully wrought book.” —The New York Times Book Review

Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation, South Dakota.

Two Native American cousins, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson, are pitted against each other as their tribe is torn apart by infighting. Rick chooses the path of peace and stays; You Choose, violent and unpredictable, strikes out on his own. When he returns, after three decades behind bars, he disrupts the fragile peace and threatens the lives of the entire reservation.

A complex tale that spans generations and geography, Quiet Until the Thaw conjures, with 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780735223356
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/27/2017
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	851 KB

About the Author

Alexandra Fuller was born in England in 1969. In 1972, she moved with her family to a farm in southern Africa. She lived in Africa until her midtwenties. In 1994, she moved to Wyoming.

Hometown:

Wilson, Wyoming

Date of Birth:

March 29, 1969

Place of Birth:

Glossop, Derbyshire, England

Education:

B. A., Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1992

Editorial Reviews

A delicately calibrated tuning fork, resonating at a cosmic pitch…awe-inspiring…This is an ardent, original and beautifully wrought book.” - The New York Times Book Review

“Fuller achieves what every creative writer with political and social concerns hopes to achieve, where the political issues of her text do not overwhelm her story with a heavy hand, and yet they are simultaneously a part of the visible and invisible forces at work on the characters’ journeys. And what journeys they undertake… In telling a story whose form embraces the Lakota Sioux’s philosophies and distinctive life cycles, Quiet Until the Thaw doesn’t just give us an authentic tale of a Native American people’s journey. It offers up a distinctive view of America, and perhaps even pleas for a new understanding of how great American novels can be written.” - Paste Magazine

“Alexandra Fuller’s first novel, “Quiet Until the Thaw,” is a fearless book. . . with trenchant wit and appropriate rage, Fuller dodges cliché. “Quiet Until the Thaw” is not so much a conventional narrative as a progression of vignettes, less a tale to be read than a chronicle to be heard. The voice of the storyteller, Fuller’s voice — by turns acerbic, compassionate and wry — imprints us almost more than the story she tells. And her gaze, though narrowly focused on a handful of Oglala Sioux characters, illuminates much more than their lives. Beyond spanning relatively large swaths of time, the book covers many physical territories as well — from the Rez in South Dakota to Vietnam, from Paris Disneyland to the moon. And in these snippets of cultural conquest, it is as much a history of (white) American capitalism in the 20th century as of a people oppressed by it…An essential book.”— WBUR’s The ARTery

“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

“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      
         
“Beloved for the string of gorgeous memoirs begun with Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller here depicts the Lakota people of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, particularly two cousins in conflict. Fluidly written, with no sanctimony and plenty of dark humor” – Library Journal

“Fuller writes unhurriedly and with an economy of expression that is nonetheless evocative... what is explored paints a vivid picture.” - Bookpage 

“Fuller’s kinship with Lakota traditions in this novel is palpable.” – Booklist

“A lyrical tale of life on the Rez. . . A tender, wry homage to Native American wisdom and lore.”- Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

01/01/2017
The author of the beloved memoirs begun with Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight presents her first novel, set on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In the 1940s, with anger growing over the past and present injustices, Native American cousins Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson find their paths diverging.

Library Journal

Alma Cuervo narrates this complex story of two Lakota Oglala Sioux cousins with quiet intensity. Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson wrestle with the despair common to contemporary Native Americans, especially the conflict between Native tradition and non-Native expectations. As Rick raises two orphaned twin boys on the reservation, Cuervo fully captures his lyrical explanations of the natural world. In portraying You Choose, she stoically recounts his miserable struggles and simmering anger, which ultimately boils over into violence. While Cuervo reads the dialogue with limited characterization, the tender precision of her enunciation illuminates the author’s graceful prose. Cuervo’s delivery allows the listener to consider the fragile ways all people, past and present, are connected. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

JULY 2017 - AudioFile

Alma Cuervo narrates this complex story of two Lakota Oglala Sioux cousins with quiet intensity. Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson wrestle with the despair common to contemporary Native Americans, especially the conflict between Native tradition and non-Native expectations. As Rick raises two orphaned twin boys on the reservation, Cuervo fully captures his lyrical explanations of the natural world. In portraying You Choose, she stoically recounts his miserable struggles and simmering anger, which ultimately boils over into violence. While Cuervo reads the dialogue with limited characterization, the tender precision of her enunciation illuminates the author’s graceful prose. Cuervo’s delivery allows the listener to consider the fragile ways all people, past and present, are connected. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

JULY 2017 - AudioFile