The best-selling author of multiple award-winning books returns with his first novel in ten
years is the hilarious and tragic portrait of an orphaned Indian boy who travels back and forth
through time in a violent search for his true identity. Sherman Alexie is one of our most
gifted and accomplished storytellers and a treasured writer of huge national stature. His first
novel since Indian Killer is a powerful fast and timely story of a troubled foster teenager—a
boy who is not a “legal” Indian because he was never claimed by his father—who learns the true
meaning of terror. The journey for this young hero begins as he’s about to commit a massive act
of violence. At the moment of decision he finds himself shot back through time and resurfaced
in the body of an FBI agent during the civil rights era. Here he will be forced to see just why
“Hell is Red River Idaho in the 1970s.” Red River is only the first stop in a shocking
sojourn through moments of violence in American history. He will continue traveling back to
inhabit the body of an Indian child during the battle at Little Bighorn and then ride with an
Indian tracker in the nineteenth century before materializing as an airline pilot jetting
through the skies today. During these frantic trips through time his refrain grows: “Who’s to
judge?” and “I don’t understand humans.” When finally blessedly our young warrior comes to
rest again in his own contemporary body he is mightily transformed by all he’s seen. This is
Sherman Alexie at his most brilliant—making us laugh while he’s breaking our hearts. Time Out
has said that “Alexie like his characters is on a modern-day vision quest ” and this has
never been clearer than in Flight where he seeks nothing less than an understanding of why
human beings hate. Simultaneously wrenching and deeply humorous wholly contemporary yet
steeped in American history Flight is irrepressible fearless and groundbreaking Alexie.
