Buy Native

Native
by William Haywood Henderson
(Dutton, 1993; Plume, 1994; Bison Books, 2010)

Seventeen years after it was first published to acclaim, Native has been reissued in a beautiful new editon from Bison Books, The University of Nebraska Press. Benjamin Alire Sáenz, poet and novelist, has written a critical introduction to the new edition.

From the introduction:

"It is our good fortune that this novel will have an opportunity to reach a new readership. We would do well to remember that Native predates both Annie Proulx's 'Brokeback Mountain' and the real-life tragedy surrounding the death of Matthew Shepard. The themes played out in both those narratives, one fictional, the other all too real, are themes that William Henderson handles subtly and delicately in this strange and urgent and painful novel. If we want to understand the real story of the American West and meditate on the nature of our humanity and inhumanity, Native is as good a place as any to begin."

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Blue Parker is a twenty-three-year-old ranch foreman in a Wyoming mountain town, high in a valley between the Wind River Range and the Absarokas. He treasures the immense solitude on the mountains, yet he begins to yearn for the love of a kindred spirit. When he hires a new ranch hand, Sam, his longing seems about to be fulfilled. But then Gilbert, a Native American from the nearby reservation, passes through town and dances his way among the men, drawing Blue and Sam into his struggles to reclaim ancient customs that have been subverted or destroyed. With a sure sense of place and a keen sensitivity to the unspoken yet unbearable tensions that shape its characters, this superb debut novel offers a subtle portrait of three men caught between past and present, in a majestic landscape that transcends both loneliness and love.

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“Henderson’s moody, near mystical evocation of the Western heart owes more to the spirit of The Scarlet Letter than to Louis L’Amour. Native is a cowboy story unlike any other.”
     —Boston Globe

“This is an original novel, a stereotype-shattering vision of the American West and its people.”
     —Hudson Review

“An intensely American novel…finely wrought. With vivid, startling characters and a graceful evocation of the land and nature.”
     —Village Voice

“William Henderson is quite simply the best young writer I know about in America right now.”
     —Edmund White

“I have never seen the American cowboy and his natural environment so intimately drawn. Henderson’s poetic hand slowly, surely, reveals to us the mystery: as we are the caretakers of the earth, so then we are, indeed, the caretakers of our souls.”
     —Tom Spanbauer

“A finely textured Western narrative.”
     —Kirkus Reviews

“Beautifully recounts the story of a man’s loss of home, occupation, and friends because of the given circumstances of his life. It is a subtly written tale, carried off with great finesse.”
     —Gilbert Sorrentino

“With Native, Henderson instantly joins the company of [Edward] Abbey, Tom Spanbauer, and Larry McMurtry as a writer with a unique and compelling vision of the modern West and a talent to put that vision into words.”
     —Echo magazine

“Explosive…an incredible first novel by what promises to be a major voice in American literature.”
     —San Francisco Bay Times

“Dazzling…reveals the gift and power of an exceptional writer.”
     —Advocate