The Death of Jim Loney

Name: The Death of Jim Loney
Brand: Penguin Random House
Availability: InStock
Author: James Welch
ISBN: 9780593397107

Author: James Welch

Narrator: Darrell Dennis

Unabridged: 5 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 02/02/2021

Categories: Fiction, Indigenous, Cultural Fiction, Literary Fiction

Synopsis

James Welch never shied away from depicting the lives of Native Americans damned by destiny and temperament to the margins of society. The Death of Jim Loney is no exception. Jim Loney is a mixed-blood, of white and Indian parentage. Estranged from both communities, he lives a solitary, brooding existence in a small Montana town. His nights are filled with disturbing dreams that haunt his waking hours. Rhea, his lover, cannot console him; Kate, his sister, cannot penetrate his world. In sparse, moving prose, Welch has crafted a riveting tale of disenfranchisement and self-destruction.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About The Author

James Welch (1940 – 2003) was the author of the novels Winter in the Blood, The Death of Jim Loney, Fools Crow (for which he received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, an American Book Award, and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award), The Indian Lawyer, and The Heartsong of Charging Elk. Welch also wrote a nonfiction book, Killing Custer: The Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians, and a work of poetry, Riding the Earthboy 40. He attended schools on the Blackfeet and Fort Belknap reservations in Montana, graduated from the University of Montana, where he studied writing with the late Richard Hugo, and served on the Montana State Board of Pardons.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Charles on October 02, 2010

Excellent story of a man painted into a corner. The prose is clean and tight and the characters are sharp and true. I will definitely be reading more of James Welch. Reminds me of a kind of Larry Brown of the American West.......more

Goodreads review by William on December 27, 2012

Can't believe it took me so long to read this book. Picked up a paperback of it at a library sale ten years ago because I liked the title and cover. Didn't know anything about Welch. A few years ago, Willy Vlautin named it as one of his favorite books in an interview and it jumped to the top of my t......more

Goodreads review by Emma on June 18, 2024

First published in 1979, I'm surprised I haven't come across this sooner, as someone who loves Native American literature and well...anything set in Montana. The Death of Jim Loney follows Jim, a man of both white and Native American parentage, who is now in his mid thirties and still living in the s......more

Goodreads review by Dina on June 03, 2008

The story is a modern American tragedy. Jim Loney is the product of a broken, alcoholic family. He is drinking himself to death. The slim novel reads like an elegiac cello solo plays.......more

Goodreads review by Linda on February 17, 2009

Too-soon-gone, Blackfeet author James Welch (1940-2003) frequently depicted the harsh reality of life on a reservation. Welch's novels can be terribly depressing, at the same time very honest in their portrayal.......more

Quotes

"An undying story told with the austerity of Camus's The Stranger, of a wounded soul seeking to become whole."
-Ivan Doig

"The Death of Jim Loney is an American classic."
-William Kittredge