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Dark River
Jacob Nashoba’s journey has taken him from his Choctaw homeland in Mississippi to Vietnam and finally to a small reservation in the mountains of eastern Arizona. A tribal ranger, he lives among people far different from any he has known. Balanced precariously between isolation and community, he is drawn to both the fastness of a remote river canyon and the Apaches who have come to be the only family he has.
Nashoba’s world is peopled by, among others, a bright young man who sells vision quests to romantic tourists, a determined elder whose power makes her a force to be reckoned with on the reservation, a resident anthropologist more "native" than the natives, a corrupt tribal chairman, a former Hollywood extra who shouts at reservation women the scraps of Italian he learned from other "Indian" actors, and the ranger’s estranged wife. Confusion and violence follow their encounter with a right-wing militia group training secretly on tribal land. The contrast between these Rambo types and the various Native American characters typifies the sardonic humor running throughout this novel of contemporary Indian identity.
Nashoba’s world is peopled by, among others, a bright young man who sells vision quests to romantic tourists, a determined elder whose power makes her a force to be reckoned with on the reservation, a resident anthropologist more "native" than the natives, a corrupt tribal chairman, a former Hollywood extra who shouts at reservation women the scraps of Italian he learned from other "Indian" actors, and the ranger’s estranged wife. Confusion and violence follow their encounter with a right-wing militia group training secretly on tribal land. The contrast between these Rambo types and the various Native American characters typifies the sardonic humor running throughout this novel of contemporary Indian identity.
296 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 4, 2011
The protagonist of the late Louis Owens’ Dark River is a half-Irish, half-Choctaw Vietnam veteran named Jake Nashoba, working as a game warden on the (fictional) Black Mountain Apache Reservation in central Arizona. Owens’ brother, Gene, was a Vietnam veteran as well, a quarter Cherokee and a quarter Cajun with a German father. Owens himself – in his words, Choctaw-Cherokee-Welsh-Irish-Cajun, the “descendant of mixedblood sharecroppers and the dispossessed of two continents” – worked as a wilderness ranger for seven years, in Washington, Arizona and California. So the novel is autobiography.
Near the end of chapter eight, a man in a wolf suit performing a (fake) vision quest for a tourist is shot by a dentist playing war games. After being shot, he becomes the tourist’s periodically wolf-shaped spirit animal, maintaining his affection for dirty jokes. So the novel is magical. Later, a spider becomes a woman, and back again. Souleater stalks the hollows beneath pines. Horned owls will tear out your heart in the night or save you from a sadist with a gun.
Dark River is built on an incredibly complex web of contradictory narratives. Most of these relate to Native American myth and representation, the contemporary USA, and the relationship between the two. The novel begins in mystery-thriller territory, with the discovery of a dead body (belonging to a bull elk) but before long – by the end of the first chapter, in fact – has already shifted into what Owens might have called “Indian Country”. The elements of thriller aren’t discarded, though; they, along with every other strand of story in the novel, are played out carefully, intertwined and unwound, to the conclusion.
The result is a bewildering vortex of tropes, jokes and allusions that would fall apart if it weren’t for the characters, who are – almost without exception – simultaneously ridiculous and spray-your-coffee-over-the-book hilarious. Among them are Avrum Goldberg, a Jewish anthropologist who – when he isn’t too busy whittling or sleeping with the Reservation’s resident witch – moonlights as Chief Gold Bird, the “official Indian”, for the National Geographic TV crews; Shorty Luke, a former Hollywood extra who will steal any story that’s left unattended for even a moment; Mrs Edwards, the aforementioned witch, who solved the riddle of twins, makes gifts of roosters’ hackles, and knows exactly who and where she is; and Jake, who doesn’t know either, and who really shouldn’t have taken off his belt.
It’s possible to read each character as the identification of a theme playing out their part in the story; tempting, as well, given Owens’ use of archetypes and understanding of what makes stories work. However, it would be wrong. Dark River’s favourite game to play is to pull out the rug and laugh as the reader falls down, and among its favourite rugs to pull is academic analysis. The characters work as people as much as the articulation of ideas; what they represent can and does shift throughout the novel.
Dark River’s deconstructionist leanings, its obsessions with perception, preconception, and surface, its willingness to accept itself as fictional (without shouting about it), and its total strangeness, recall a number of writers and novels; in particular, China Mieville’s Kraken. The two novels are working in extremely different territory and have quite different appeal, but they share tactics for picking stories apart on the fly and stitching them back together into something new and weird, and which on first read feels oddly unsatisfying. The sensation of being constantly wrong-footed by the writer, stumbling through the story rather than ambling or running, can get frustrating.
This, though, is part of the point. Dark River, like Kraken, is built to be re-read and lived in. Rather than providing a stock run-through of genre tropes, Dark River flays its genre – mystery-thriller-with-spiritual-Native-American-warrior – and dresses up in its skin. If the end result for the reader is a state of uncertainty, maybe that is just proof of Owens’ ability to build empathy with his protagonist. As he said of another of his novels, “Maybe the message is that certainty is not a condition mixedbloods were meant to know.”
Near the end of chapter eight, a man in a wolf suit performing a (fake) vision quest for a tourist is shot by a dentist playing war games. After being shot, he becomes the tourist’s periodically wolf-shaped spirit animal, maintaining his affection for dirty jokes. So the novel is magical. Later, a spider becomes a woman, and back again. Souleater stalks the hollows beneath pines. Horned owls will tear out your heart in the night or save you from a sadist with a gun.
Dark River is built on an incredibly complex web of contradictory narratives. Most of these relate to Native American myth and representation, the contemporary USA, and the relationship between the two. The novel begins in mystery-thriller territory, with the discovery of a dead body (belonging to a bull elk) but before long – by the end of the first chapter, in fact – has already shifted into what Owens might have called “Indian Country”. The elements of thriller aren’t discarded, though; they, along with every other strand of story in the novel, are played out carefully, intertwined and unwound, to the conclusion.
The result is a bewildering vortex of tropes, jokes and allusions that would fall apart if it weren’t for the characters, who are – almost without exception – simultaneously ridiculous and spray-your-coffee-over-the-book hilarious. Among them are Avrum Goldberg, a Jewish anthropologist who – when he isn’t too busy whittling or sleeping with the Reservation’s resident witch – moonlights as Chief Gold Bird, the “official Indian”, for the National Geographic TV crews; Shorty Luke, a former Hollywood extra who will steal any story that’s left unattended for even a moment; Mrs Edwards, the aforementioned witch, who solved the riddle of twins, makes gifts of roosters’ hackles, and knows exactly who and where she is; and Jake, who doesn’t know either, and who really shouldn’t have taken off his belt.
It’s possible to read each character as the identification of a theme playing out their part in the story; tempting, as well, given Owens’ use of archetypes and understanding of what makes stories work. However, it would be wrong. Dark River’s favourite game to play is to pull out the rug and laugh as the reader falls down, and among its favourite rugs to pull is academic analysis. The characters work as people as much as the articulation of ideas; what they represent can and does shift throughout the novel.
Dark River’s deconstructionist leanings, its obsessions with perception, preconception, and surface, its willingness to accept itself as fictional (without shouting about it), and its total strangeness, recall a number of writers and novels; in particular, China Mieville’s Kraken. The two novels are working in extremely different territory and have quite different appeal, but they share tactics for picking stories apart on the fly and stitching them back together into something new and weird, and which on first read feels oddly unsatisfying. The sensation of being constantly wrong-footed by the writer, stumbling through the story rather than ambling or running, can get frustrating.
This, though, is part of the point. Dark River, like Kraken, is built to be re-read and lived in. Rather than providing a stock run-through of genre tropes, Dark River flays its genre – mystery-thriller-with-spiritual-Native-American-warrior – and dresses up in its skin. If the end result for the reader is a state of uncertainty, maybe that is just proof of Owens’ ability to build empathy with his protagonist. As he said of another of his novels, “Maybe the message is that certainty is not a condition mixedbloods were meant to know.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 15, 2018
I have really enjoyed Louis Owens other novels and looked forward to reading this one. For the most part this one was a good read until the end. It felt like he ran out of ideas and simply ended the book with a confusing, fantasy/myth construct that was quite disappointing. I cannot think of many books where the last few pages left so much to be desired and soured what had been an enjoyable novel.
January 30, 2022
I enjoyed this esoteric set of characters but was put off by the ending. Flashed on the ending to “Blazing Saddles”, of all things. Owens comes up with some imaginative characters, situations, and imagery, but when it comes to a coherent story, I find him lacking.
August 19, 2017
loe, love, love
April 16, 2022
I dont necessarily want to slam this book because there are some good aspect, but I do feel like the good stuff is firmly layered below a lot of analysis and thought, and the book "on top" is lackluster enough to make motivating yourself to do that thinking harder.
The characters, like Jensen, speak so laughably unnaturally and in a super bizarre manner. Reading sections where he speaks a lot feels like walking through quicksand while rolling your eyes the whole time.
I also just feel like I didn't get any closure of clarity for the majority of the character, like Domingo and Tali, despite the fact that we spend dozens of pages in their perspective. This really contributes to the wading through mud feeling, but with a frustrating lack of purpose that makes me simply wonder "what was the point of like a third of this book"
The characters, like Jensen, speak so laughably unnaturally and in a super bizarre manner. Reading sections where he speaks a lot feels like walking through quicksand while rolling your eyes the whole time.
I also just feel like I didn't get any closure of clarity for the majority of the character, like Domingo and Tali, despite the fact that we spend dozens of pages in their perspective. This really contributes to the wading through mud feeling, but with a frustrating lack of purpose that makes me simply wonder "what was the point of like a third of this book"
June 27, 2024
Read on recommendation from my daughter, who read it for a college English class. The first half of the book was five stars and set up an excellent set of characters and dynamics with engaging dialogue and prose. The second half turns into something very different and changes direction in a way that for me was disappointing.
I felt the turn it took was jarring and did not fulfill what the author set up for us in the beginning. But I am not really able to look at it from a Native American perspective, and there is a lot more meaning and metaphor happening that I know is going over my head. This was my daughter's favorite book of the class she took and asked me about a couple of things that I clearly missed. So, like lots of excellent literature there are layers beyond what I can see, and I like that.
I felt the turn it took was jarring and did not fulfill what the author set up for us in the beginning. But I am not really able to look at it from a Native American perspective, and there is a lot more meaning and metaphor happening that I know is going over my head. This was my daughter's favorite book of the class she took and asked me about a couple of things that I clearly missed. So, like lots of excellent literature there are layers beyond what I can see, and I like that.
March 23, 2025
There are some weak points in the plot, but the narrative is more complicated than it appears to be. One is led to believe Jacob Nashoba is the protagonist, while it may actually be Shorty Luke instead. If you go along with Owens' chaotic ending, the book is enjoyable.
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June 2, 2019i want to read this story because it is perfect novel.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews