Synopses & Reviews
Forty years ago, while paging through a book sent as an unexpected gift from a friend, Roger Welsch came across a curious reference to stones that were round, “like the sun and moon.” According to Tatonka-ohitka, Brave Buffalo (Sioux), these stones were sacred. “I make my request of the stones and they are my intercessors,” Brave Buffalo explained. Moments later, another friend appeared at Welschs door bearing yet another unusual gift: a perfectly round white stone found on top of a mesa in Colorado. So began Welschs lesson from stones, gifts that always presented themselves unexpectedly: during a walk, set aside in an antique store, and in the mail from complete strangers.
The Reluctant Pilgrim shares a skeptics spiritual journey from his Lutheran upbringing to the Native sensibilities of his adoptive families in both the Omaha and Pawnee tribes. Beginning with those round stones, increasing encounters during his life prompted Welsch to confront a new way of learning and teaching as he was drawn inexorably into another world. Confronting mainstream contemporary cultures tendency to dismiss the magical, mystical, and unexplained, Welsch shares his personal experiences and celebrates the fact that even in our scientific world, “Something Is Going On,” just beyond our ken.
Review
“If it can be said of anyone who is not an Indian (Native American, American Indian) that he or she has the ‘soul of an Indian, it has to be said of Roger Welsch. He offers the one thing that diverse groups of people, indeed the world, need to get along: understanding.”—Joseph Marshall III, author of
The Lakota Way: Stories and Lessons for Learning Review
“We can all enjoy the wit and humor of my long-time friend and Native rights colleague Roger Welsch. He presents an important message, as we strive to live together as one great people joined together on the same land by a common heritage.”—Walter R. Echo-Hawk, author of In the Courts of the Conqueror: The Ten Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided Joseph Marshall III
Review
“A self-described wannabe, Roger Welsch has over many years absorbed a deep knowledge and appreciation of the Indian tribes of the Northern Plains. His writing, sincere and often humorous, reveals a personality that many Indian people and even one tribal council have come to trust, love, and adopt into their circles.”—Charles Trimble, Oglala Lakota journalist and author Walter R. Echo-Hawk
Review
“Once again my Heyoke friend, Roger Welsch, has captured the true essence of being a ‘wannabe, not afraid to take risks, staying close to the fire but not too close. Like our people, he understands what it means to live in two worlds. He does so with humor, gusto, and fearless dignity.”—Judi M. gaiashkibos (Ponca), executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs Judi M. gaiashkibos
Review
“Embracing Fry Bread is quintessential Welsch. Roger hooks the readers with a title about a tantalizing culinary delight, then reels em in to the deeper heart of the book. This is a watchful, thoughtful mans memoirs of how he has been drawn into three Indigenous families and communities through no particular volition of his own. This is the story for anyone who wakes up one morning and realizes he or she has somehow become something beyond what nature and nurture had originally provided . . . and is the better human for it. Welsch writes a compelling personal account that can resonate with us all. As Welsch would say, it is not so much about being a WANNAbe as a GOTTAbe.”—Mark Awakuni-Swetland, author of Dance Lodges of the Omaha People Mark Awakuni-Swetland
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"Welsch's natural warmth and skill as a storyteller, and his obvious respect for the individuals he encounters, come through clearly in his writing, and it's easy to see why so many people, from so many backgrounds, might be honored to call him "friend.""—Publishers Weekly
Review
"This book will allow you a rare glimpse into the Native American World, and whether you are closely familiar or whether this world is completely foreign, you will learn so much as you read this book!"—Dad of Divas Kirkus
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"Though an anthropology scholar, Welsch is never pedantic or preachy. Instead, this is a heartfelt and very personal story, rich in wry and self-deprecating humor."—Deborah Donovan, Booklist
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"Welsch's gratitude toward the Omahas and Pawnees is real, his outrage at their painful history is justified, and his story is proof that Native American culture is still alive and complex."—Kirkus
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"Welsch manifests himself as a listener who has spent fifty-five years involved in Native culture where he has made uncountable friends. His ability to write honest prose, both informative and erudite, captivates from the beginning."—Wynne Summers, Great Plains Quarterly
Review
and#8220;Read this book and no one gets hurt.and#8221;and#8212;Bob Kerrey, former Nebraska governor and senator
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and#8220;This new book by Roger Welsch is one that every red-blooded Nebraska
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and#8220;While Roger and I may not have the same perspective on and#8216;some things,and#8217; we are totally in agreement when it comes to the beauty of the state and its people. His view is unique and refreshing.and#8221;and#8212;Kay Orr, former governor of Nebraska
Review
and#8220;Roger Welsch, by far the greatest humorist to ever call Dannebrog home, is indeed a Nebraska treasure. He is gifted; he is very funny; Roger is our Will Rogers.and#8221;and#8212;Charlie Thone, former governor of Nebraska
Review
"In these luminous essays on wanderlust, Caswell . . . embraces travel writer Bruce Chatwin's contention that walking is a poetic act that can cure the world of its ills. . . . His travels culminate in a Death Valley vision that replaces his pervasive sense of dislocation with the answer to a question that has nagged him for years: what is home? "—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"[Kurt Caswell's] writing brings every sense to bear, and days later you will still have an exotic smell lingering in your nostrils."—Craig Childs, Orion
Review
"An Inside Passage celebrates the best of ecopsychology in contemporary American nature writing. It explores the complex interrelationship between the trajectory of our lives and the places in which we live them."—Gioia Woods, ISLE
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“The author moves from place to place, examining the natural world around him with scrupulous care and a keen, sympathetic eye, and examining even more intensely the seasonal transformations in his own heart and mind. By the end, I felt I had traveled along with him, sharing his sorrows and his epiphanies, his vigor and courage and ceaseless quest for experience and understanding. This is a memoir of extraordinary revelation, which transforms the reader as well as the author.”—Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author of Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books
Review
“Kurt Caswell has mastered the noble tradition of the essay as walk-around, and he reads the contours of the land, his mind, and the urgency of companions who sometimes choose to accompany him on his solo journey with delicacy, generosity and a sharp attentiveness to the possibility of new life, in all its harmonious contradictions. This is lovely writing and musing.”—Phillip Lopate, author of The Art of the Personal Essay and Totally, Tenderly, Tragically
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"Welschand#8217;s stories [have] great universality; they speak of all Native Americans, not just an individual tribe or a single holy artifact."and#8212;Publishers Weekly
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"Lots of fun to read."and#8212;Library Journal
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"Roger Welsch is Americas premier storyteller. From his lips, small-town life takes on the dignity of history and the currency of the evening news. . . . These are Americas stories."—Charles Kuralt
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"Roger Welsch is an old plains possum who can nose out a good tale in your backyard."—William Least Heat Moon, author of Blue Highways
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"Welsch's. . .review and analysis of frontier humor is refreshing . . . another gap has been filled on the fascinating subject."—Journal of the West
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"The book is more than a collection of good tales and jokes; it is, in fact, a serious study about humor. . . . well documented and well written."—Nebraska History
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"This entertaining and worthwhile book will be of particular interest to those who are interested in plains pioneers, especially if they have a feel for the humorous aspects of rural life. However, even the humorless will profit from reading it because it contributes significantly to our understanding of pioneer life."—North Dakota History
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"Anyone with a love for horses, the judging of horseflesh, and an appreciation for the history of man's long association with the horse will like this book."—William E. Koch, Journal of the West
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"These tales are gems of humor and wry understatement, displaying American folk-humor at its best. The jargon of horse-trading and early twentieth-century horse lore is fascinating. . .this book will be equally at home on the shelves of a university library or in an applecrate bookshelf nailed to the wall of a ranch bunkhouse. "—Western American Literature
Review
"The thirty or so tales give a clear picture of the folklife of farmers and country people, as well as horsetraders, on the Great Plains during the end of the last century and the early years of this. . .they are told in a direct and economical style."—George Ewart Evans, Folklore
Review
“Roger Welsch let himself be engulfed by the world Native people know and was swallowed whole in the waters of its deep and ageless sea. The Reluctant Pilgrim tells the stories of some of the things that have happened as a result. And it shows that the Spirits chose wisely when they tagged Roger Welsch as their own.”—Dawn Hill Adams, member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and co-president, senior scientist, and founder of Tapestry Institute
Synopsis
When he was out playing Indian, enacting Hollywood-inspired scenarios, it never occurred to the child Roger Welsch that the little girl sitting next to him in school was
Indian. A lifetime of learning later, Welschs enthusiasm is undimmed, if somewhat more enlightened. In
Embracing Fry Bread Welsch tells the story of his lifelong relationship with Native American culture, which, beginning in earnest with the study of linguistic practices of the Omaha tribe during a college anthropology course, resulted in his becoming an adopted member and kin of both the Omaha and the Pawnee tribes. With requisite humility and a healthy dose of humor, Welsch describes his long pilgrimage through Native life, from lessons in the vagaries of “Indian time” and the difficulties of reservation life, to the joy of being allowed to participate in special ceremonies and developing a deep and lasting love of fry bread. Navigating another culture is a complicated task, and Welsch shares his mistakes and successes with engaging candor. Through his serendipitous wanderings, he finds that the more he learns about Native culture the more he learns about himself—and about a way of life whose allure offers true insight into indigenous America.
Synopsis
Roger Welsch is a fierce fan of Nebraskaand#8212;not just the football team, or the stateand#8217;s famous beef, or its endless sky, or its ferocious and ferociously unpredictable weather, but the whole thing. His license plate says CAPT NEB, and he means it.and#160;Welsch loves Nebraska as the heart of Americaand#8217;s Great Plains. His perception of the state is not always conventionaland#8212;occasionally itand#8217;s even abrasiveand#8212;but heand#8217;s thought a lot about this place some call and#8220;Fly-Over Countryand#8221; or and#8220;The Middle of Nowhereand#8221; or even and#8220;The End of the Earth.and#8221; And what he has to say about it makes interesting reading not just for natives but certainly also for outsiders, for those who love the place and those who would rather travel through hell than make another drive across Nebraska's endless miles.
Synopsis
Although finding a way to feel at home in the world is ultimately the lifes work of us all, rarely has the search ranged as far or found as precise and moving an expression as it does in An Inside Passage. Winner of the 2008 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize, Kurt Caswells narrative chronicles his travels in the rugged mountain forests of Japans Shiretoko National Park, on a vision quest in Death Valley, and to the sacred waters of the Ganges River. Whether contemplating a great blue heron as it rests riverside at the onset of a storm, reflecting on a beloved students untimely death, walking through the Navajo reservation, or receiving the blessing of a Hindu priest, Caswell unerringly finds the moment of truth. His journey also takes us across the landscape of his marriage, both its initial sweetness and its eventual failure. The ensuing inner dislocation echoes a larger estrangement that makes more poignant Caswells quest to find a place he can call home.
Synopsis
The Turtle Creek band of the fictional Nehawka Indians wages a battle for the return of their sacred Sky Bundle, a medicine pouch containing artifacts. It reposes under glass in an eastern museum at the beginning of Touching the Fire. Seven interlinked stories, beginning with a court battle in the year 2001 and going far back in time to the origin of the Bundle and the first Nehawka village on the Great Plains, reveal the richness and depth of Indian cultural heritage. Touching the Fire is multilayeredand#8212;sad, humorous, and always informative.
Synopsis
Roger Welsch did what many Americans only dream of doing. While still in his professional prime, the folklorist and humorist quit a tenured professorship and headed toward the hinterland. Resettled in the open heart of Nebraska with his wife, Welsch proceeded to learn how to live. Its Not the End of the Earth, but You Can See It from Here is, in his own words, "a celebration" of his "rural education." These twenty-eight tales of the Great Plains convey in familiar Welschian style "the importance, charm, beauty, and value of the typical." They describe the wisdom that Welschs new-found teachers share with him. From everyday country people, he learns the fine arts of relaxing, using his noggin, trusting his instincts, and laughing a lot more, while Omaha Indian friends teach him the most profound lessons of all.
Synopsis
Were our forefathers liars? "You bet they were," says Roger Welsch, "and damned fine ones at that." The proof is in
Catfish at the Pump, a collection of the kind of humor that softened the hardships of pioneering on the Great Plains. From yellowed newspapers, magazines, and forgotten Nebraska Federal Writers' Project files, the well-known folklorist and humorist Roger Welsch has produced a book to be treasured. Here are jokes, anecdotes, legends, tall tales, and lugubriously funny poems about the things that preoccupied the pioneer plainsman: weather extremes; soil quality; food and whiskey; an arkload of animals, including grasshoppers, bed bugs, hoop snakes, the ubiquitous mule, and some mighty big fish; and even sickness and the poverty that would inspire black laughter again in the Great Depression.
Catfish at the Pump proves abundantly that the art of story telling was practiced diligently by our plains ancestors. Roger Welsch, who brought out Shingling the Fog and Other Plains Lies in 1972 (reprinted by the University of Nebraska Press in 1980), now issues this "book about lies and liars," knowing full well that "underlying the pioneer sense of humor is a profound respect for truth."
Synopsis
Plains folklorist Roger L. Welsch has edited a lively collection of stories by some master yarnspinners—those old-time traveling horse traders. Told to Federal Writers' Project fieldworkers in the 1930s, these stories cover the span of horse trading: human and equine trickery, orneriness, debility—and generosity.
About the Author
Roger Welsch was a professor of English and anthropology at the University of Nebraskaand#8211;Lincoln until 1988, when he moved to Dannebrog, Nebraska, to write full time. He is the author of more than thirty books, including Itand#8217;s Not the End of the Earth, but You Can See It from Here and Touching the Fire: Buffalo Dancers, the Sky Bundle, and Other Tales, both available in Bison Books editions.