Fools Crow by James Welch

 

James Welch’s novel Fools Crow (first published 1986) is one of the great works of American fiction. It's certainly the best novel I’ve ever read about American Westward Expansion. Set in Montana Territory in 1869-70, it deals with the struggle of the Pikuni branch of the Blackfeet tribe against the complex divisions within the tribe as well as against the encroachment of white settlers and the U.S. Army.

The narrative collapses the conventional western distinction between realism and the magical, as well as balancing on the often terrifying line between hopelessness and hope. The subtlety and complexity of the characters brings to the forefront the dynamic between brutality and care for others that is one of the main tensions of the story. And the prose is remarkably and uniquely beautiful and unlike anything else I’ve come across in the English language.