House Made of Dawn
A Novel

it's been so long since i read lit fic by a man that i forgot why i read mostly female authors. this had a lot to say and a lot going for it, but unfortunately my reading of it was constantly distracted and brought down by the terrible female characters and the awful man-writing-lit-fic sex scenes. so......more

I found some amazing quotes from the text about the Southwestern landscape, which I loved. I felt, however, that the characters of Abel and his grandfather, Francisco, are an enigma to me. I don't have a lasting memory of them as vivid characters. But what does stand out in the text is the landscape......more

House Made of Dawn is built on the model provided by John Joseph Mathews' Sundown and D'Arcy McNickle's The Surrounded: mixed race Indian finds himself unable to fit in on the reservation or in white culture. Momaday adds to this formula the fact that his protagonist, Abel, is an American war vetera......more

This Pulitzer Prize winning novel tells the story of Abel, a young Native American torn between the reservation and the white world of settler colonialism, but it is also a book about the estrangement and alienation of postwar America in general. After fighting in WW II, Abel returns to the rez drun......more

I read this book in one sitting. I found it extremely well written, and throughout I felt like I was existing with the characters. This book achingly portrayed the plight of Native Americans in the middle of the twentieth century, torn between the ancient and modern ways, scourged by alcoholism. I r......more