The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band

Frances Washburn (Author)
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Opening July 4, 1969, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band begins with a raucous Fourth of July gig that abruptly ends with the Red Birds ducking out of the performance in a hilarious hail of beer bottles. By the end of the evening, community member Buffalo Ames is dead, presumed to be murdered, just outside the bar. Sissy Roberts, the band’s singer and the “best female guitar picker on the rez,” is reluctantly drawn into the ensuing investigation by an FBI agent who discovers Sissy’s knack for hearing other people’s secrets.

The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band is part mystery, part community chronicle. Shaped by a cast of skillfully drawn characters, all of whom at one time or another are potential suspects, at the core of the story is smart and compassionate Sissy. Four years past high school, Sissy’s wry humor punctuates descriptions of reservation life as she learns more about Ames’s potential killer, and as she embarks on a personal search for ways to buck expectations and leave rural South Dakota to attend college.

Ames’s death is just an example of the undercurrents of violence and passions that run through this fast-moving novel of singing, loving, and fighting. Following Sissy as she unravels the mystery of both Buffalo Ames’s death and her own future, The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band is the story of Indian Country on the verge of historic change and a woman unwilling to let change pass her by.
The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band is filled with a cast of memorable characters. Washburn has a knack for the quiet, tight narrative line that packs a punch.”—Lisa Tatonetti, co-editor of Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature


“A novel about lives stuck and getting unstuck, about the hurts and humor of daily life, The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band is a critical act of literary sovereignty.”—Susan Bernardin, co-author of Trading Gazes: Euro-American Women Photographers and Native North Americans, 1880-1940


“Washburn's smart, hard-edged writing drops you into a world of rez rodeos and honky-tonks and, of course, a murder. Greasy spoon cafes become home to honest emotion and broken dreams with echoes of classic county and western songs. The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band gives witness to a splendid, fresh literary voice.”—James Ruppert, editor of Nothing But the Truth: An Anthology of Native American Literature
The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band
184 Pages 5.5 x 8.5
Published: February 2014Paperback ISBN: 9780816530823
Published: February 2014Ebook ISBN: 9780816598823

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