Flight - by Sherman Alexie (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

The best-selling author of multiple award-winning books returns with his first novel in ten years is the hilarious and tragic portrait of an orphaned Indian boy who travels back and forth through time in a violent search for his true identity.

Sherman Alexie is one of our most gifted and accomplished storytellers and a treasured writer of huge national stature. His first novel since Indian Killer is a powerful, fast, and timely story of a troubled foster teenager--a boy who is not a "legal" Indian because he was never claimed by his father--who learns the true meaning of terror.

The journey for this young hero begins as he's about to commit a massive act of violence. At the moment of decision, he finds himself shot back through time and resurfaced in the body of an FBI agent during the civil rights era. Here he will be forced to see just why "Hell is Red River, Idaho, in the 1970s." Red River is only the first stop in a shocking sojourn through moments of violence in American history. He will continue traveling back to inhabit the body of an Indian child during the battle at Little Bighorn and then ride with an Indian tracker in the nineteenth century before materializing as an airline pilot jetting through the skies today. During these frantic trips through time, his refrain grows: "Who's to judge?" and "I don't understand humans." When finally, blessedly, our young warrior comes to rest again in his own contemporary body, he is mightily transformed by all he's seen.

This is Sherman Alexie at his most brilliant--making us laugh while he's breaking our hearts. Time Out has said that "Alexie, like his characters, is on a modern-day vision quest," and this has never been clearer than in Flight, where he seeks nothing less than an understanding of why human beings hate. Simultaneously wrenching and deeply humorous, wholly contemporary yet steeped in American history, Flight is irrepressible, fearless, and groundbreaking Alexie.

Review Quotes

Praise for Flight

"Funny and provocative--a trip worth taking." --Ann Cummins, The Washington Post Book World

"A funny, irreverent, sardonic but sentimental, rebellious voice set beside his elder . . . contemporaries . . . Alexie is the bad boy among them, mocking, self-mocking, unpredictable, unassimilable, reminding us of the young Philip Roth." --Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books

"Gutsy . . . Alexie has established an impressive literary reputation as a bold writer who goes straight for the aorta. He is in the business of making his readers laugh and cry. And his most recent novel is no exception. . . . Right up to the novel's final sentence, Alexie succeeds yet again with his ability to pierce to the heart of matters, leaving this reader with tears in her eyes." --S. Kirk Walsh, The New York Times

"Alexie's rapid-fire transitions are so finely wrought that he never loses control. And, as in all his work, the author keeps the punch-line pipeline open and flowing freely. But the humor never squelches Zits's increasing gravity and depth. . . . Equal parts morality tale, bildungsroman, and Being John Malkovich-type high jinks, Flight offers up big ideas without ever seeming maudlin or preachy." --Rod Smith, Time Out New York

"Few writers grab you by the emotional throat quicker than Sherman Alexie, and he doesn't let go until the end. Actually, not after that, either. Flight, his first novel in more than a decade, does it again, taking off with the pace of a rocket, or more accurately a time machine, and landing right on target, in the molten bull's-eye of the human heart. . . . This is Alexie's genius--we instantly feel what it was like to be that person. . . . [The ending] is so unexpected, yet earned and deserved. . . . Alexie shows his readers that there is no heart too broken to be fix." --Jim Lenfestey, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Every few years we can only hope for a new Alexie work to sound a wake-up call, equal parts fierce and defiant, manic and irreverent. . . . An often thrilling and surprising ride, and wholly Alexie." --Anderson Tepper, Village Voice

"Sherman Alexie's Indians are profane, pained, clever, confused and angry--just like real people. A scabrously moving novel." --Diane Roberts, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Sherman Alexie, who has been called the Native American James Baldwin, writes with anger, humor, raw inventiveness, and defiant pride." --Amanda Heller, Boston Globe

"Far more stark and morally intricate than any Hollywood blockbuster. . . . The most unpretentious novel I've read in a long time. It's a narrative stripped to its core, all rage and heart. . . . Unceasingly cinematic. . . Flight might be categorized as a novel for particularly precocious young adults, but it also works on deeper levels. It's raw and vital, often raucously funny, and there isn't a false word in it." --Tom Barbash, New York Times Book Review

"Sherman Alexie never allows readers to wade timidly into turbulent waters of his novels or stories. Instead he simply hurls folks into the deep and seems to say, swim if you can--or dare." --Mark S. Luce, Los Angeles Times

"Elegantly mixes free-floating young adult cynicism with a charged, idiosyncratic view of American history. Alexie plunges the book into bracing depths." --Publishers Weekly

"An energetic read. . . . Alexie does move the reader through his LSD trip of a plot smoothly and without many speed bumps." --Tim Cuprisin, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"In his fiction and poetry, Alexie has proven himself a specialist in such dark corners of Indians' history in America." --John Freeman, Raleigh News and Observer

"The multitalented Seattle writer creates his first novel in a decade--an impassioned and outrageous rant by a violent young Indian." --Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Alexie produces many affecting moments and encounters." --Mary Brennan, Seattle Times

"A short, provocative time-travel tale of violence, history, humor, and sadness. . . . Flight establishes a new level of compassion and moral tone for Alexie. His writing is spare but moving, passages amuse and bemuse . . . and his prose at times turns to poetry. . . . We are fortunate to have a new work by him, with his dark humor and his sharp drama, to stimulate our memory of history and our understanding of the present." --Jim Carmin, The Oregonian

"In his first novel in 10 years, Alexie gives his many fans an odd choice of hero: a time-traveling mass murderer. Outrageous, yes, but compelling (in an understandable but unsavory way), given the random acts of violence that the world witnesses every day. . . . Alexie, while heaping hurt upon hurt, also keeps a sharp focus, thanks to the voice of his narrator. Zits sounds a good bit like Alexie: cynical, curious, defensive and perhaps a bit too smart for his own good." --Greg Morago, Hartford Courant

"Flight is full of the black humor and disarming honesty for which America has come to depend on Sherman Alexie." --Lissa Harris, Boston's Weekly Dig

"A lively and entertaining read." --William J. Cobb, San Francisco Chronicle

"Alexie uses a daring conceit to implicate our naiveté toward the cyclical nature of violence and revenge. . . . In Flight, Alexie forces the reader to view the players close-up and to witness the acts of personal betrayal and heroism against the landscape of larger political forces, blowing us about and hopefully returning us to something that resembles home." --Alexios Moore, Boldtype

About the Author

Sherman J. Alexie, Jr., was born in October 1966. A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, he grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington, about 50 miles northwest of Spokane. Approximately 1,100 Spokane Tribal members live there. Alexie's father is a Coeur d'Alene Indian, and his mother is a Spokane Indian.