Description

From her home on the California coast, Dalva hears the broad silence of the Nebraska prairie where she was born and longs for the son she gave up for adoption years before. Beautiful, fearless, tormented, at forty-five she has lived a life of lovers and adventures. Now, Dalva begins a journey that will take her back to the bosom of her family, to the half-Sioux lover of her youth and to a pioneering great-grandfather whose journals recount the bloody annihilation of the Plains Indians. On the way, she discovers a story that stretches from East to West, from the Civil War to Wounded Knee and Vietnam, and finds the balm to heal her wild and wounded soul.

One of Harrison’s most ambitious novels, Dalva explores an extraordinary family through the strong, engaging voice of an unforgettable woman, confirming Harrison as one of America’s most memorable writers.

Publisher Review

Monumental . . .There is no putting aside Dalva until the time bombs go off, the identities are revealed, and the skeletons almost literally tumble from the closets. . . . A book to read with trust and exuberance. -- Louise Erdrich * Chicago Tribune * Harrison's storytelling instincts are nearly flawless . . . The people in Dalva reemerge as full-blooded individuals who almost incidentally embody much of the innocence, carelessness, and urgency that played so large a part in the settling of this country. * New York Times Book Review * Moving, interesting, satisfying . . . Dalva is Harrison's most ambitious novel to date. * Washington Post * If the reader is in any doubt at all during the opening pages of Jim Harrison's 1988 novel Dalva as to whether they're in the hands of a master craftsman, then it is likely that these doubts will be put to bed not far into its opening chapter. . . . His subjects . . . are as violent and raw and strongly regional as those in any work of rural American fiction, but no less intellectually complex. -- Tom Cox * Guardian *