67 books like Perma Red

Every discussion about the evolution of writing in ‘the West’ has to start with Willa Cather, who was the first writer from the west to be awarded a major literary award when she won the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, which isn’t even one of her five best novels. Cather wrote openly about alcoholism, domestic violence, and other painful topics, transforming western writing from cardboard cutout characters to real people. My Ántonia has become an American classic, not just in western literature but in all literature. My Ántonia is told from the point of view of a young farm boy who falls in love with the enchanting Ántonia, and it’s beautifully written, taking us into the emotional heart of youth and idealism in the West.

Picking out one of this master storyteller’s plethora of great reads is nearly impossible, but this 2002 novel features Father Damien Modeste, a woman who has lived as a man on the remote Ojibwe reservation of Little No Horse. The gripping plot takes a turn amid an investigation into a potentially phony saint named Sister Leopolda.

I read this book in graduate school at the University of Washington, where Robinson had also been a graduate student. What struck me so forcefully was how the father is killed off in a train wreck at the beginning of the novel to usher in the exploration of the female life of generations of women.

No work before made me see how a male character and tradition can marginalize female life. This novel encouraged me to focus on my mother and sisters in my own writing.

Winter Wheat, published in 1944, tells the story of Ellen Webb, a young woman coming of age on a farm in Montana. Walker moved from back east to Great Falls, Montana in 1933, and she is one of many writers who adopted Montana as their home state and wrote very eloquently about the unique challenges of growing up in such isolation, living a life so focused on hard work and basic survival. Walker published several excellent novels, but Winter Wheat was her tour de force. 

I was drawn to Harness’ incredible memoir because she speaks truth to power from an Indigenous perspective as a survivor of Indian adoption.

As an infant in the 1960s, Harness was adopted by a white couple and raised far from the rez, far from her birth community, and completely segregated from her cultural heritage. This story is about her weaving her way back home and making sense of her traumatic adoption.

As an adoptee myself I found her story gut wrenching and inspiring. Harness is a brilliant writer and a phenomenal woman. Her wisdom, authenticity, and strength reverberate through the pages of this beautiful memoir.

This gripping novel tells a story that reveals the deep and complex effects of gender-based violence on generations of a family.

I found it fascinating and unusual to consider an adolescent boy's reaction to gender-based violence another male committed against his mother.  The book wraps themes of justice, discrimination, and Native American traditions around a brilliant exploration of how trauma ripples through a whole community and explores what it takes for humans to heal.

Erdich's insights into the complexity of life on a North Dakotan reservation are provocative, educational, and lyrically written, taking us to a place not many outsiders get to visit.

Hatter Fox is one of those rare stories which causes me to lose my sense of self.

There is no who am I, how am I, or why am I, none of that matters, all that matters is the story. This story is so real, and shows so accurately what can happen to young minds when they are raised in an oppressive, prejudiced environment.

Hatter Fox also exemplifies the true power of fiction, in that it allows us to shed a tear. We steel ourselves against the harsh realities of life, and do not weep for the downtrodden, but for fictional characters, we are free to feel our sorrows.

This superb book is a culturally and indigenous-language-focused study of women in four central Mesoamerican native societies—Aztecs (Nahuas), Mixtec, Zapotec, and Mixe.

In addition to a deep dive into texts dealing with all facets of women’s lives, Sousa uses visual evidence to great effect, showing how images contain much information about women’s and gender history, a history in which women struggled over centuries to maintain agency and authority despite efforts by a newly imposed colonial state to erode their power and status and exploit their labor.

This is Paula Gunn Allen’s modern-day retelling of many Native American tales. They feature talking animals, shape-shifting bears, and creation stories. Here, we see how the underneath comes to the surface in wondrous and awe-inspiring ways. The ordinary walks with the extraordinary. In fact, the ordinary is extraordinary. Allen sees power in these tales for women, and that’s what I loved about this book. These stories are part of a female shamanic tradition; they are in many ways medicinal. 

My main focus in my book is people, Meg Wilkinson the first female veterinarian and other adventurers and pioneers who wound up on the Klondike Gold Rush.

Though the wolf like nature of humans and the human nature of wolves permeates the whole story. I also had to research veterinary history but I found no particular book on that to recommend.

Pauline Johnson did not go to the Klondike but she is a very influential figure of the times and in the life of Meg. I’m a fan of Charlotte Gray’s biographies and I think her biography of Pauline Johnson is the best.