House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

"The landscape of the American West has to be seen to be believed and has to be believed to be seen" - N Scott Momaday

For the 2021 Back to the Classics Category- choose a classic by a BIPOC author, I knew I wanted to go with a Native American writer but all of the writers I wanted to read, Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie, Linda Hogan, David Heska Wanbli etc are contemporary and to conform to the classic's rules the books we choose have to be at least 50 years old.  And so after a bit of research I came upon N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn, winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and it truly is a book worthy of all the praise it has received over the years.

House Made of Dawn is set during the mid twentieth century and centers around a young Kiowa man named Abel who returns to his hometown in Jemez, New Mexico after serving overseas in World War II.  As the author tells us in the introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of the book, Abel is a composite of many of the Native American men he knew when he was growing up in Jemez New Mexico.  Young men who had grown up on the reservation.  It was the only world they knew and then suddenly they were pulled out of that world, drafted and sent overseas.  They were not prepared for what they saw and experienced during the war.

Many came home suffering from PTSD and they turned to alcohol, violence, suicide.  When Abel's grandfather for example meets his returning grandson at the bus station the grandfather is shocked and saddened to discover that Abel is drunk.  Abel tries to settle back in to his old life in Jemez but he is haunted by flashbacks from the war and one night during a festival in the village he drunkenly kills a man thinking he is killing a demon.  

The next time we meet Abel it is 1952.  He has been released from prison and is living in Los Angeles.  He has a job and a fellow Native American roomate named Ben Benally, and a girlfriend, Millie.  The three friends form a bond going on picnics, telling each other about their lives, sharing dinners but Ben worries it can't last: 

"He was unlucky.  You could see that right away.  He wasn't going to get along around here.  Millie thought he was going to be all right, I guess, but she didn't understand how it was with him. He was a longhair, like Tosamah said.  You know, you have to change.  That's the only way you can live in a place like this.  You have to forget about the way it was, how you grew up and all. Sometimes it's hard but you have to do it.  Well, he didn't want to change, I guess, or he didn't know how."

Abel is caught between two worlds.  In years past he would have stayed in Jemez New Mexico where he grew up, hunting, fishing and taking part in the Kiowa traditions and customs as his ancestors did.  But the 20th century changed all that and a central question House Made of Dawn poses is can Abel find a place in the modern world and if not can he go home again, return to Jemez and the world he once knew?

Normally I don't go in for too many nature scenes in novels or non-linear story telling but here it works.  The descriptions of life and nature in Jemez, New Mexico are so well done and a spirituality infuses this book.  You will finish House Made of Dawn wanting to know more about Native American culture, traditions and there are so many really fine Native American authors writing today but House Made of Dawn is a very good place to begin.