From the Hilltop

Authors

Toni Jensen

Date of this Version

Spring 2010

Comments

© 2010 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska

http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/From-the-Hilltop,674187.aspx

Abstract

For the characters we meet in Toni Jensen’s stories, the past is very much the present. Theirs are American Indian lives off the reservation, lives lived beyond the usual boundaries set for American Indian characters: migratory, often overlooked, yet carrying tradition with them into a future of difference and possibility. Drawing on American Indian oral traditions and her own Métis upbringing, Jensen tells stories that mix many lives and voices to offer fleeting perspectives on a world that reconfigures the tragedy and disconnection often found in narratives of American Indian life. A brother falls off the roof of an abandoned hotel, a young bride tries to connect with a family she’s never met, and an adopted teenage girl seeks acceptance where she is viewed as an outsider. The reader also encounters a kidnapped nephew, strangers in a hotel, and even a stray dog: these are the souls that populate Jensen’s stories, finding tentative connections with the past, the future, one another, and finally us.