Extra Indians

by Eric Gansworth

"This is familial redemption at its finest, which is to say agonizingly complex and wholly engaging." - Booklist 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, Extra Indians offers a powerful glimpse into contemporary Native American life.

Genres: Fiction, Native American, Adult Fiction, Indigenous, Friendship, Native Americans, Contemporary

272 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2010

About the author

Gansworth is an enrolled citizen of the Onondaga Nation; however, he grew up in the Tuscarora Nation as a descendant of one of two Onondaga women present among the Tuscarora at the foundation of the nation in the 18th century. Gansworth originally qualified in electroencephalography, considered a profession useful to his nation; however, he went on to study literature and to continue a lifelong interest in painting and drawing.

Gansworth has written five novels, including the award-winning Mending Skins (2005) and Extra Indians (2010). In all his novels, illustrations form an integral part of the reading experience. His most recent novel, If I Ever Get out of Here is his first Young Adult novel, and deals with the 1975 friendship between two boys, one a resident of the Tuscarora Nation, the other living on the nearby Air Force base. In a starred review, Booklist stated that the book succeeded in "sidestepping stereotypes to offer two genuine characters navigating the unlikely intersection of two fully realized worlds."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Ga...

Reviews

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

“People are always wishing on falling stars, trying to see them, lying out under the nighttime sky, scanning back and forth, just hoping to spot one, and usually the ones they catch are fleeting, almost out of sight, vague impressions in their peripheral vision.”

It took me too long to read this book. When I finished, I felt like I lost the thread, the storyline didn’t seem to work. I kept thinking that I had missed something.

After I finish a book, I go back through, looking for a quotation for my review. This gives me an opportunity to review what I just completed. Sometimes finding a quote is easy. Given that this novel already had me off balance; it should not be a surprise that I couldn’t find the right passage.

After reading this beginning sentence several times, I realized that it does two things for me. First of all, the falling stars are important to the tale Gansworth is telling.

Secondly, this sentence captures how I feel about this book. I have a fleeting feeling that I know what Gansworth is talking about. But it is a vague impression, like I missed a chapter or two. All the characters seem to be just on the edge of my vision and when I turn their way, they move again.

Maybe my problem was that there was no one in the book with whom I shared many experiences. I didn’t fight in the Vietnam War, I didn’t raise a foster child, I have never been a long-distance truck driver. Most importantly, I never met a woman looking for the lost treasure from the movie Fargo.

That is not usually a problem for me, but with Extra Indians, I never found a hook between me and the people in the story.

I don’t regret picking this novel up. I read it to fulfill a task in the Book Riot challenge and I never would have tried it without that push. I have always said that every book is not for everyone. However, I have learned some things about Native Americans, the war in Vietnam and the way people can confuse each other.

If you are interested in film, Native Americans, friendship and various forms of love, I recommend you at least read the back cover of this book. It wasn’t for me, but it may be for you.

[Heather Pearson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vietnam veteran Tommy Jack McMorsey is working as a truck driver when he happens into an odd situation. A Japanese tourist is searching in the snow behind a truck stop for the missing ransom money from the fictional movie Fargo. Tommy Jack doesn't feel right about leaving her there; he asks her if she wants to ride along with him. Later she goes out into the winter night, lies down in the snow and dies in her sleep.

The ensuing police investigation and media interest sets Tommy Jack on a very public reflective journey. His memories of Vietnam, those of his best friend Fred Howkowski and his son, and also of his lover Shirley Mounter are all brought into view. Wounds long buried are unearthed and thrust into daylight.

I have to say right up front that I loved this book. Every minute of it. I read it as an ebook sitting at my desktop computer. Not a comfortable way to read, but I couldn't stop once I started this book. I would much rather have had a paperback as I wanted to carry it around with me, and hold it close. I wanted to trace the cover images with my finger and re-read passages, particularly those about the Fireball game and those times Tommy Jack spent with Shirley.

Why did I love it? It seemed to me that it was such a real set of circumstances that they could have happened to a neighbour or friend. I can't imagine being torn from your comfy home life and dropped literally into a war zone. The friendship that Tommy Jack formed with Fred was the type of friendship that would last forever. Even thirty years after Fred's passing, Tommy Jack still referred to him as his best friend. Even writing this I am tearing up. I know how it feels to lose your best friend, gone physically but never gone from your heart. Those are memories your hold onto, you cherish much as Tommy Jack has. There is also the love affair between Tommy Jack and Shirley. A war time love born out of desperation, anything to help him survive in the jungle, but which developed into something real and lasting once they met in person. It is also an un-resolved love that's been put on hold for decades.

I selected this book mostly based on the information that the author Eric Gansworth is a First Nations Author. He is a member of the Onondaga Nation. I started searching out and reading book by First Nations authors over two years ago as part of a Canadian Reading Challenge. I truly enjoyed reading the books I found and have continued to search out more such authors. Mr. Gansworth is an author who's works I look forward to reading more of.

[Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading Eric Gansworth's Mending Skins, I decided to dive into another novel by him. His multiple narrator technique gives his novels a multi-dimensional aspect that I love. Because I read Mean Spirits, I was already familiar with Fred, Annie, TJ, Tommy Jack, and most of the other characters. While these novels are not a series per say, having the background of Mending Skins definitely helped me read this novel. It was very interesting to read both novels because gaps were filled in and stories were developed. This novel by itself is okay, but when you combine his other works, it is pretty awesome. I wouldn't say this book is the best I have ever read, but the ending was really great in my opinion. I definitely was not expecting it, which is great because I hate cliches and predictability.
Before reading this novel, I watched the movie Fargo. I thought it would be necessary to understand this book. While I now know it wasn't that essential, I am happy that I both read the book and watched the movie.
I really liked Gansworth's note at the end that explained how the "true story" of the Japanese woman showed him how dreams can become dangerous. In addition, I liked how it explored the vast effects of PTSD. Lastly, I think this novel/author does a great job with developing his characters.

I would recommend this and Gansworth's other novels to anyone who is interested in character development/ Native American tradition/ really anyone who likes to read!

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not sure this is a novel that will leave many satisfied. The author gives us the point in the end to mull over before we get to the actual end, that stories can answer all of the questions yet leave the reader/listener with gaps that can, perhaps, never be filled.

The story begins with the main character, Tommy Jack McMorsey, a trucker from Texas, encountering a woman from Japan who is looking for the hidden money from the movie Fargo. He tries to help her out, but ends up embroiled in a scenario that balloons into a big media frenzy.

As the media report on the story and get facts wrong (as they do often do) Tommy Jack makes an effort to get the correct version of events out there. But the media are looking for sensationalism, and their efforts to interview Tommy Jack about what happened turn towards his personal life: his marriage, his time in Vietnam, and his best friend from Vietnam, a Native American named Fred Howkowski.

Tommy Jack gets a lot of the attention at first in the novel, then the spotlight shifts onto Fred, the experiences Tommy and Fred encountered in Vietnam, and their attempts at life after returning from the war.

There is a lot packed into this book. It’s descriptions of the war are brutal and I wonder how much is based on actual stories from that war. There are no good guys or bad guys, just humans being human, trying to do their best and realizing too late maybe there was more they could do. Maybe not.

[Colette Kern · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not for the faint of heart, but also tender

As someone who remembers the Vietnam era, and is interested in humanity, love, humor, friendship and contemporary America, this book has it all. Including the haunting mysteries of suicide and trauma. Very readable, wonderfully descriptive, as always, one wants to continue to know the characters when the story "ends..."

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gansworth creates some fascinating vibes though for me with a little too long between them.
Still a recommendable novel indeed.

[Jessica Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really good story, well told. Almost made me cry at the end - rare for me.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extra Indians, the latest tour de force from Eric Gansworth, is a rollicking, engrossing, and big-hearted novel that defies expectations at every hair-raising turn.

Tommy Jack McMorsey – a West Texas flatlands native, Vietnam vet, flawed husband and father, and long haul driver – travels from Texas to northern Minnesota annually to watch the meteor showers and wish upon the stars. But on one cold night, he chances upon a deluded Japanese tourist who is searching for the buried ransom money from the Coen brothers’ movie Fargo. When she wanders off and dies of exposure, McMorsey finds himself thrust into the spotlight of an intrusive media campaign, dredging up ghosts from his past.

One of these “ghosts” is Fred Howkowski, an Indian man whose life he saved once in Vietnam. But once was the charm; McMorsey can’t save his best friend again once Howkowski drifts to another kind of “shoot”, pursuing a Hollywood speaking role as an “extra Indian”. To complicate matters, upon arriving stateside, Howkowski entrusted McMorsey to raise his son – T.J. – who is tormented about why he was given up in the first place. And then there’s art history professor Annie Boans, the love child of McMorsey and Shirley, the woman he was romantically entangled with and whom he has never forgotten.

The eventual meeting between Tommy Jack and his two children – the adopted son he raised, the daughter he never knew about – is just the foundation of a story that digs deep to explore powerful themes: how the past continues to haunt and inform the present. How images and stereotypes intersect with reality in Native America. How what is thought and what is spoken are often disjointed. How there is really no such thing as a “single truth”, no matter how hard you search.

And search they do. Gansworth – a natural born storyteller who breathes life and complexity into his cast of characters – has a lot to say about how we pursue “the truth” in an era of reality T.V.; a crew for a reality-based T.V. show that specializes in unsolved mysteries shows up at his door with its own agenda, with predictably terrible results. He delves into “the truth” of Hollywood, where, according to Howkowski, “they cover me in this orange dye to make me darker for the screen, and it looks like blood every night when I try to wash it down the bathtub drain.

But most harrowing and heartbreaking of all is “the truth” of Vietnam – the resonance of that misguided war and the inescapability of one’s actions. Eric Gansworth saves two of the most haunting memories for last; one can thoroughly understand how anyone who experienced these horrors can never be “whole” again.

Gansworth suggests that the truth is complex and that knowledge isn’t power nor is it liberating. McMorsey ponders, “How do you tell these secret parts of your life…” They’re not secret because you need them to be, but secret because they are the moments you share with one other person, and here on, the camera everything about you is at least once removed. Their machine keeps rolling magnetic tape from one spool to another, copying your image over and over again, but they never get it right. No matter how closely they try to document your moves, they only get one angle…”

It is, in the end, impossible to read this book from a one-angle perspective. A road trip detours into something more mysterious, which, in turn, opens up questions about Vietnam and the past, the endurance of love, the search for identity, and the secrets we keep and reveal. There is no closure, only progress. In other words, this book is about life itself.

It helps to know that Eric Gansworth is a First Nations Author, a member of the Onondaga Nation. The character of Fred Howkowski appeared in The Ballad of Plastic Fred and Indian Summer. According to an afterword by the author, he “began to understand that the story of Fred Howkowski was not over yet. He kept showing up, a ghost wandering at the fringes of my other work.” He is finally – and expertly – laid to rest.

[Catherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

As anyone who's read the back flap of this book before buying it (or taking it home from the library) will know, the story begins with the death of a Japanese woman in North Dakota, who's searching for the ransom money depicted in the movie Fargo. There's an author's note at the end of the book that says, hey, you probably think this is a preposterous fiction, but google it - it really happened.

Trouble is, that's not the preposterous part of the book. What doesn't hang together very well is everything that comes after it - the link between that woman, a reservation in upstate New York, and the driver of 18-wheel rigs in West Texas; the motivations of two members of the rez community who head down to Texas to meet that man; the ins and outs of the stories they have to tell each other. Again and again I thought - why this connection? Why Texas? Why big rigs? Why is one character an art history professor? Why does one character want connection after running out on things years before? Gansworth never convinced me that the connections made sense - even if that sense was intended to be the nonsensical connections of war - and I particularly never felt like I understood Annie's character (one of the two American Indian characters in the book).

I'm left puzzled. I'm left not really liking many people in the book. I'm left wondering what it was that Gansworth most wanted to communicate through his novel, because I truly have no idea.

[Connie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm struggling with rating this one. Gansworth made some unusual moves here, and a few of them were a bit jarring (a bookend event that seemed to get only perfunctory attention at the end of the novel; circular or hard-to-follow sentence structures; strange chronology). So, at first, I wasn't sure the guy knew what he was doing. By page 100, however, I cared deeply for the characters and was hooked on the plot. I felt Gansworth was less successful when he was writing as the woman narrator, and some of the Southern dialogue fell flat for me, but Tommy Jack and Fred were beautifully drawn characters, full of complexities and oddities and mistaken notions. The novel includes a fabulous author's note at the end in which Gansworth admits that his goal in life and writing is to embrace all things odd, and, for me, that comment helped explain some of his moves in the book. NOTE: The title is a bit misleading. The book is more about Vietnam and friendship and star-crossed lovers and big dreams than it is about reservation life. A few of the characters being AI is almost more incidental than anything, which is how things should be, don't you think?

[Mike Tarasovic · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not much to say about this one. I picked it up randomly after school one day at a bookstore that was mostly concerned with revolutionary and LBGT literature (oh, Lower East Side). I guess this book's counter-culture credibility came from being mostly about American Indians, but there was nothing particularly subversive about it. The main shortcoming to me was that the author developed one truly interesting character - Tommy Jack McMorsey - and everyone else just seemed to be there to serve the story. Considering that the crux of the book is Tommy Jack's relationship with his sort-of-son and maybe-daughter, it might have made sense to give us something to care about with either of those two characters.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book had a powerful impact on me. I appreciate the point of view of a Viet Nam vet returning to the questioning looks of his small town neighbors. Could anyone other than his army buddy understand his experience? But the book is about so much more. What happens when you fall in love with someone who isn't available? What questions are harbored by children who aren't raised by their biological parents? How does the sometimes distorted portrayal of people in the media impact lives? Was there really a million dollar ransom hidden in Fargo as the movie claims? The book is rich and Tommy Jack is unforgettable.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty carzy story of an onondaga over the road trucker tommy jack mcmorsey who, while making his annual pilgrimage back up north to look at the meteor showers, picks up a japanese tourist who is looking for the buried treasure from the movie fargo. things start to fall apart after that" frozen japanese tourists, vietnam flashbacks, failed marriage and semi failed love affair, best friend's suicide, and white people who just don't like tommy jack. interesting take on modern indians in usa.

[Judi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's Jill's review:

http://bookreview.mostlyfiction.com/2...

I had my eye on this one for awhile -- actually requested an ARC from NetGalley and received it but couldn't manage to read it on my iPod (which is how I normally read Kindle books) followed the instructions to no avail.

Finally ended up buying it and reading it after Jill's review was posted.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book blew me away. I picked it up on a whim, and was completely unprepared for the emotional impact it would come to have on me. The ending especially was beautiful, and complicated, and a perfect encapsulation of the human experience. I will definitely be looking for more titles by this author. Superb.

[Allison · Rating 2 out of 5]

I sped through this book, not because I enjoyed it, but because I couldn't wait to get it over and done with. I couldn't relate to a single character and just kept waiting for the connections to make some semblance of sense. Even the ending left me feeling more disconnected than ever. I really tried to like this book . . but it's just not my cup of tea.

[Athena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this, but finally it was a disappointment. Can someone explain to me why you'd write in first person if that person's voice was not verbally lively/curious/informed/elegant/eloquent/etc.?

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Witty, compassionate, and powerful. A cleverly crafted story.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I occasionally lost track of the storyline as I was reading too many other books at the same time and the narrator shifts around, but enjoyed how the threads wove together in the last few chapters.

[Milkweed Editions]

NAIBA Book of the Year for Trade Paperback Original (2011)

[Tara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rambling. Boring. Pointless.

[Colleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Marginally interesting story about a Vietnam veteran.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Endearing characters and hard subjects; really poignant at some points but had a tendency to drag towards the end.

[Lisa Lesyshen · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gem! I am so excited that I stumbled across this book.

[Chrissy]

Zero stars since I didn't finish. Might just not have been the right timing. Storyline felt a bit contrived, and the fact that I'm told right away that a character ends up dying sort of took the wind out of the sails for me.