Ghost Dances: Proving Up on the Great Plains
Author(s): Josh Garrett-Davis
Growing up in South Dakota, Josh Garrett-Davis always 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 who bring his Plains to life are the destruction and resurgence of the American bison; his great-great-grandparents' twenty-year sojourn in Nebraska as homesteaders; Native American "Ghost Dancers," who attempted to ward off destruction by supernatural means before the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee; the political allegory to be found in The Wizard of Oz; and current attempts by ecologists to "rewild" the Plains. GHOST DANCES is a fluid combination of memoir and history and reportage that reminds us that our roots matter-and might even be inspiring and fascinating.
General Information
- :
- : Little, Brown & Company
- : Little, Brown & Company
- : 0.454
- : 01 September 2012
- : United States
- : 01 October 2012
- : books
Other Specifications
- : Josh Garrett-Davis
- : Hardback
- : 1
- : 256
More About The Product
A gifted young writer takes a singular journey back to his native Midwestern American Plains.
"Alienation and authenticity commingle in this memoiristic meditation on American's lonesome midsection....Garrett-Davis writes evocatively of "the latent fury in this monotonous [Plains] landscape" and finds some juicy tufts of lore to graze on."-- Publishers Weekly
Josh Garrett-Davis has an MFA from Columbia and is currently a PhD student in American history at Princeton.