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Overview
Every winter, Tommy Jack McMorsey makes the long haul from Texas to northern Minnesota to watch the meteor showers. One cold night, in a moment of kindness, Tommy picks up a deluded Japanese tourist determined to find the buried ransom money from the movie Fargo. When she dies of exposure in Tommy Jack's care, a media storm erupts, jarring loose pieces of Tommy Jack's past: the horrors of Vietnam, a love affair, and the suicide of his closest friend, Fred Howkowski.
Wending between the present and a string of haunting memories-Tommy Jack's aimless life as a truck driver and husband, Fred Howkowski's thwarted career as an actor in Hollywood, and the return of Tommy Jack's estranged adoptive son to Texas-this lively, engrossing novel explores the ways images and stereotypes intersect with reality in Native America.
Synopsis
Every winter, Tommy Jack McMorsey watches the meteor showers in northern Minnesota. On the long haul from Texas to Minnesota, Tommy encounters a deluded Japanese tourist determined to find the buried ransom money from the movie Fargo. When the Japanese tourist dies of exposure in Tommy Jack’s care, a media storm erupts and sets off a series of journeys into Tommy Jack’s past as he remembers the horrors of Vietnam, a love affair, and the suicide of his closest friend, Fred Howkowski. Exploring with great insight and wit the ways images, stereotypes, and depictions intersect with, Extra Indians offers a powerful glimpse into contemporary Native American life.
Publishers Weekly
Gansworth's exemplary fourth novel begins in the arresting voice of long-haul trucker Tommy Jack McMorsey, a Vietnam vet with a lot on his mind and a dead woman outside his rig, face up in the snow. His tangential involvement in the woman's death lands him in the media spotlight, which in turns forces him to answer some uncomfortable questions about his past. Meanwhile, Annie Boans, a young scholar who traces Tommy Jack's history to the reservation of her birth, has a few questions of her own, and sets off to demand answers in person. Tommy Jack's chapters are filled with lyrical meditations on friendship, war, and love, with most of the novel's business being conducted in Boan's sections. Though some late book-plot bloat slows the momentum, Gansworth delivers a messy and satisfying resolution once Tommy Jack and Annie finally meet. Longtime readers of Gansworth will recognize some characters from his previous work (Mending Skins; etc.), but the discoveries in this novel will delight new readers even more. (Nov.)