Native: A Novel

by William Haywood Henderson

Set in the contemporary West of ranchhands and drifters, this startlingly original novel tells the story of a man trapped between his own deepest desires and the demands of a strict society where love between men is the ultimate transsgression. "Finely wrought."--The Village Voice.

Genres: LGBT, Fiction, Gay

Paperback

First published March 1, 1993

Reviews

[Mel Bossa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once in a while I come across a book that allows me to really leave reality for a few hours at a time. At times it's the characters, and at others, it's the setting, but if I'm lucky it's both. It was the case for this PERFECT novel.

Blue's longing for his ranchhand Sam, his turmoil and inner battle, was so vividly rendered by the author, I could hardly breathe in some passages. The novel is so erotically charged, yet remains chaste--never graphic.

The land, mountains and animals are intricate to the tale and though I usually don't linger over descriptions of landscapes, I found myself reading every line of every page as though I'd never read a book before.

Lastly I have to mention Gilbert, the Native American character. How refreshing he was. I was touched by his story and enlightened as well.

Of course the end is raw and many things are left unresolved, but I knew it wouldn't be one of those perfectly tied together endings. I hope Blue comes back for Sam. At least no one dies.

If highly recommend this novel to anyone who loves to read!!!

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blue Parker, the twenty-three-year-old foreman of a Wyoming ranch, has a secret crush on his ranch hand, Sam. The two cowboys are drawn to each other, and Blue makes plans to place Sam in a high-mountain cow-camp for the summer (ala Brokeback Mountain), thinking he will have Sam to himself in this idyllic getaway setting. But before he can act on his plan, Gilbert, a Native American who fancies himself a Two-Spirits (gay), draws a drunk Sam into a lewd dance at the local honky-tonk. The other cowboys begin to suspect Sam could be queer. The result is that Sam is later beaten to within an inch of his life in the alley behind the bar. Once Sam is released from the hospital, Blue moves Sam into his own cabin to care for the younger cowpoke. This move casts suspicion on Blue as well.

The events that unfold in that drunken night on the dance floor will drive Gilbert across the western states looking for his place in society, while Blue must choose between the home he loves and the man he loves, all the while the three men are bound on a second collision course.

This is very much a novel rooted in a place; it is literature of the modern American West. It deals with man’s relationship to the land, and the loneliness and hardship that land presses on him. But unlike most Western literature, Henderson does not evoke the stereotypical hero. There are no heroes in this story, only lonely men caught up in circumstances that leave them no choices. It boils down to men fighting between their place in society and their desires.

This is a story of love and hate, but also of finding your place. On the one hand, Blue and Sam’s love for their rugged western lifestyle, for the grandeur of the mountains, and for each other are both special and touching. But when they become ensnared in the politics and prejudices of an isolated ranching town, they become the target of blind hate. They must ultimately sacrifice one love for another.

In many ways I adored this book. The characters are richly drawn and deliciously complicated, and often I found the prose as beautiful as the settings being described. Henderson has an amazing talent for painting pictures and expressing feelings with words.

However, there in lies the rub. This book is not an easy read, mainly because the rich description is often too detailed. It slows the pacing to a crawl, going into minuscule detail about things that have little or no effect on the storyline. The other problem I had was that it wanders, which sometimes made it confusing. It’s mostly written in 1st person from Blue’s perspective, but it occasionally switches to 3rd person, other times in 1st person for other characters, and it slips into numerous back flashes that the narrator couldn’t possibly know about. Several times it bounced from a character’s past to imagined future, to present. If you’re looking for an easy, straight-foreword read, keep looking.

However, if you don’t care about switching narrators, want to read a damned good story and love to wallow in beautiful prose, then I can highly recommend Native.

[Andrew Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was about to give a fourth star to this unusual novel but then realized it would have been for a selfish and rather subjective reason. By this I mean that I loved the fact that the landscape of the Southwest United States, where the story is set, is the major character in the book, whereas many readers might find the remarkably lengthy descriptions and references to the land repetitive and even boring. My fondness for the emphasis on geography in this story is probably because, having lived there, I’m only too aware of how the incredible power of the landscape shapes pretty much everything about a town or settlement anywhere in the Southwest — people’s characters, work, social life, spirituality, and more. And, in the three major characters here, who are homosexual, all of the above strongly influences how they see themselves fitting, or not fitting, into the country and into their communities, and explains their dilemmas.
The book is also a meandering story that moves back and forth in time in a rather dream-like fashion, which may not appeal to the reader who enjoys a more linear narrative. Nevertheless, there are many moments of great beauty and mystical power to the heartbreaking story, which make it a book well worth reading. It’s a thinking person’s version of Brokeback Mountain, and, to my mind, much superior.

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I wanted to place him up there against the Ramshorn, place him in that green space above the marsh.”

Beautiful imagery, first of all. It can be difficult for me to follow landscape descriptions but it was worth the struggle. Quietly impactful, powerful sense of restrained emotion.

The bad: Incest, possibly involving a minor. Not a lot or graphic but it's still present. Not clear whether or not it is condoned. The character seems to think it is a key part of what made them who they are, in a positive sense, but that doesn’t mean the author feels the same way. Hopefully it doesn’t.

Generally a dream to read, very hypnotic. Lots of things are explored that don’t really happen, just imagined as possibilities. The overall effect is very meditative and introspective. Discombobulating in a good way.

[Elliott Scheuer · Rating 5 out of 5]

reread from when i was 17 - didn’t understand it then now i do

[Ethan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lots of great scenic imagery and yearning, but the structure is…interesting…hopping between characters’ points of view with no regard for clarity and interspersing background with the present without clear lines. The idea is fantastic, but some editing and deeper diving into some of the themes would’ve doubled my interest and rating

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

This meandering tale of modern cowboys is told mainly through the voice of Blue, a young drifter who seems ready to settle down as a succesful ranch foreman. But when he becomes emotionally and sexually involved with Sam, one of his ranch hands, Blue loses the respect of his drinking buddies and friends in town. The conflict is quickly laid out in the opening scene: Blue becoming jealous when Gilbert, a spooky Indian berdache (a transgender shaman) leads a drunken Sam out onto the dance floor and scandalizes the bar crowd with an erotic performance. Blue stalks out, leaving Sam to be beaten up by one of the homophobes. Henderson presents a rough and tumble Wyoming where the live-and-let-live philosophy can't quite tolerate guy love. All this plays out in an overpowering landscape of barren desert and towering mountains. The three main characters frequently escape into the woods to escape the glare of the townfolk, and the narrative, with frequent flashbacks to their boyhoods, at times seems to get lost in the woods, too. This plot is murkier and perhaps even darker than that of "Brokeback Mountain." As the three men gather around a campfire in the final pages, we're not really sure what will become of them, but their future looks bleak.

[Micha Meinderts · Rating 2 out of 5]

It started out promising. I liked the prose, though it was hard sometimes to follow it because of the unusual sentence structure. Lots of commas. But the further I got into the “story”, the less I understood what was going on. It went every which way, switching viewpoints and hopping from one time to the other.
Half of the time I didn’t know what was going on and the other half I didn’t really care. On the cover it’s compared to Brokeback Mountain and yes, it’s about as boring. Convoluted, too. So many words to hide the actual meaning of them, rather frustrating. No real plot to speak of, I found it hard to figure out what made Blue tick and honestly couldn’t give a shit what happened to him. I don’t know if that was just because of the language barrier and that I missed half of it, or whether it’s just not my type of novel, but I didn’t exactly like it either way.
I guess a redeeming factor would be the good characterisation of the surroundings, but honestly, spend a little less words on the red dirt and the three bites of bread and the horses and cows and sage and whatever.
Don’t think I can give it more than 2, and that’s mostly because of the nice wording.

[Claudia Putnam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books from the past ten years. It's interesting to think that it came out well before Brokeback Mountain--both books are set in Wyoming, feature beautiful descriptions, and explore hard choices among attractions to community, love/lust, and landscape.

I noticed that some of the reviewers here on GR were troubled by the point-of-view shifts, but I loved that element of the book. Sometimes the landscape requires a larger perspective. And sometimes we come in close to ride with one of the men. Readers need to hang loose a little more and try to follow the art a bit, see what it's saying, not just as a story, but as a form.

I thought the ending was absolutely killer. In Westerns the hero needs to ride off into the sunset, right? Even if he isn't a hero. And he can never love, right? There's never a happy ending in a true Western.

But it was a satisfying ending, because it felt true.

Anyhow, I read the book several years ago and still think about it. Some of the images haunt me to this day, and many of the insights still make me think.

[Amy Mair · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reads like a solitary ride through the mountains, down into lush valleys, across rushing streams - encountering others along the way, maybe even loving some of them, but at the heart lies a powerful sense of solitude that echoes the vastness of the American West. The lone cowboy - a perfect symbol for the longing and isolation, often self-imposed, of the main character in this novel. A man who walks among us -all of us, across the world- trying so hard to be perfect, to figure out what perfect is, to dream of loving somebody. Aren't we all a little like that? How can we deny anyone the freedom to express that longing? How can we deny anyone the freedom to love? That's what this novel meant for me.

[Lawrence · Rating 2 out of 5]

The language is evocative and often reaching poetic heights in his description of nature, solitude, differentness, and loneliness, . But the first person present narrative is hard to follow. Different characters narrate and it is often hard to figure out exactly who is talking when until you are into the text or finished with it. The present tense narratives confuses the time in which the voice of the particular narrator speaks. And, the description of the action often seems dreamlike which creates confusion about the speaker's reactions and motivation. The ending left me guessing exactly what happened.

[Deanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moving yet haunting. I enjoyed how the landscape of the West was portrayed and cringed at some of the cultural truths.

[Alexis Ames · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have no idea wtf this book was about. The descriptions were all right, though.