Red Blood

by Jack Forbes

Red Blood is the first novel by Native American author Jack Forbes whose incredibly prolific writing career includes more than fifteen titles. The novel traces a young Native American man's journey through life, and consequent coming of age, as he travels all over North America seeking insights into his values, relationships, spirituality and culture.

1 pages, Paperback

First published May 29, 1997

Reviews

[Kalin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Red Blood is only half-novel, with long passages of dialogue containing historical accounts and social/political commentaries on US colonialism and its impacts. Jack Forbes deep understanding is on display, but the storytelling here leaves a lot to be desired. In a nutshell, he didn't much apply the "show, don't tell" principle. The second half of the book focuses more on the characters and their lives than history, and is therefore more readable. It's not the best work of creative writing, but there's wisdom in it.

[Carol Harrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is less a novel and more a lecture on the very real and shameful injustices that have been done to Aboriginal people in the Americas for hundreds of years. Unfortunately it is not well written and is poorly edited, and although I kept reading to the end, I kept wondering what the actual story was. It was a kind of rambling account of one young man's life, with lots of information--interesting, but delivered in a stilted, hectoring kind of way. I would recommend Thomas King's "The Inconvenient Indian", which presents the same information in a much more engaging way, even though it is not a novel.