Before the story

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Table of Contents

Copyright Page

For Wellpinit and Reardan, my hometowns

There is another world, but it is in this one. W.B. Yeats

Foreword

Sometimes I wonder what we all did right to deserve the wonderful books of Sherman Alexie.

Whenever I’ve sat down to read a novel of his, or a short story, I’ve had that Holden Caulfield moment where I’d like to call the author up on the phone and just “shoot the breeze” for a while. I feel like I know his characters instantly, and yet I always want to know them more. I feel like they’re sitting just a few steps away, telling me their stories—with honesty, some sadness, and yet with great humor. For Sherman Alexie also makes us laugh. If Eskimos truly do have dozens of words to interpret snow, it’s still not as many as the ways Sherman Alexie can make us laugh.

Take his book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian as an example. When a person reads this book, they will laugh in the following ways:

Lightly

Excitedly

Mournfully

Raucously

Knowingly

Loudly

Softly

Tearfully

Surprisingly

Lovingly

Angrily

Admiringly

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…

Sometimes we meet a character and we fall so hopelessly in love with him or her that we want to be that character, no matter how tough they have it, no matter how they might mess things up. These are always the most human characters, and Arnold Spirit from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is one of them. As I read this book, I wanted to talk like Junior, walk like him, and draw like him. What more can you ask of a book and its author? Well, you can ask to laugh and cry simultaneously—to bring laughter and sadness together and strengthen both of them. Sherman Alexie is one of those writers who can do it… and on top of that, he can also make you look at Ghandi in a completely different light!

For me it’s an honor to recommend this book to anyone who wants to take in a young boy from an American Indian reservation and say, “Tell me your story. Give me everything you’ve got.” Sherman Alexie delivers that easily, but he also gives much, much more.

Yours sincerely, Markus Zusak Author of The Book Thief