Cover of Flight

Flight

Sherman Alexie is one of our most gifted and accomplished storytellers and a treasured writer of huge national stature. His first novel in ten years is the hilarious and tragic portrait of an orphaned Indian boy who travels back and forth through time in a charged search for his true identity. With powerful and swift, prose, Flightfollows this troubled foster teenager—a boy who is not a "legal" Indian because he was never claimed by his father—as he learns that violence is not the answer.

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The journey for Flight's young hero begins as he's about to commit a massive act o violence. At the moment of decision, he finds himself shot back through time to resurface in the body of an FBI agent during the civil rights era, where he sees why "Hell is Re driver, Idaho, in the 1970s." Red River is only the first stop in an eye-opening trip through moments in American history. He will continue traveling back to inhabit the body of an Indian child during the battle at Little Bighorn and then ride with an Indian tracker in the nineteenth century before materializing as an airline pilot jetting through the skies today. During these furious travels through time, his refrain grows: "Who's to judge?" and "I don't understand humans." When finally, blessedly, our young warrior comes to rest again in his own life, he is mightily transformed by all he has seen.

This is Sherman Alexie at his most brilliant—making us laugh while he's breaking our hearts. Time Outhas said that "Alexie, like his characters, is on a modern-day vision quest," and in Flighthe seeks nothing less than an understanding of why human beings hate. Flightis irrepressible, fearless, and groundbreaking Alexie.

Audience
young adultadult
Length
short · 192 pages

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These suit anyone who liked Flight. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Fools Crow Shares fiction, historical fiction, native
  2. Stuck in the 70's Shares young adult, fiction, time travel
  3. Tracks Shares fiction, historical fiction, magical realism
  4. Love, Lucie x Shares young adult, fiction

“People who read Flight tend to reach for these next.”

  1. The Grass Dancer
  2. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto
  3. Gardens in the Dunes
  4. The Surrounded

“If you want more of the same (historical fiction about native american), start with these.”

  1. A Touch of Scarlet
  2. A Breath of Eyre
  3. The Future of Us
  4. Are You Experienced?

“Readers describe these the same way.”

  1. Rokitansky
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  3. MacGregor Tells the World: A Novel
  4. Like We Care

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Ask the Pilot
  2. For The Lover In You
  3. Judge Dredd: Origins
  4. Jet Set: The People, the Planes, the Glamour, and the Romance in Aviation's Glory Years