Solar Storms

by Linda Hogan

Book Overview

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Linda Hogan, Solar Storms tells the moving, "luminous" (Publishers Weekly) story of Angela Jenson, a troubled Native American girl coming of age in the foster system in Oklahoma, who decides to reunite with her family.

At seventeen, Angela returns to the place where she was raised--a stunning island town that lies at the border of Canada and Minnesota--where she finds that an eager developer...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684825392
• ISBN13: 9780684825397
• Release Date: February 1997
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Beautifully written

I think anyone who is interested or want to be interested in indigenous literature, needs to maybe start with this book. It is so beautifully written that i can't stop reading. Linda describes so well the interconnectedness between everything in this world and how it affects all of us. Please read! Once you read this you would want more of it.

Glad I Found This Book Again

I read this book about 8 years ago and it stuck with me ever since. But for some reason when I wanted to recommend it to other people I couldn't ever remember the title or the author. Finally I looked it up here using various key words. Now I can recommend it to others and read it again! It's a book about odysseys--in some way comparable to the book "Cold Mountain" in the sense that people are traveling and finding out who they are in an amazing landscape. This book also represents well the politics and experience of Native American life. It's more than that, though--it's a beautiful story. I consider it one of the best books on my lifetime list.

Powerful prose, compelling vision

_Solar Storms_ is a powerful novel that should appeal to anyone concerned with issues relating to the environment, Indians, community activism, abuse, feminism, or cultural politics. Its fine writing offers even stronger drawing power.The story is set 1972-1974 within a Native community threatened with destruction by the kind of economic development that marginalizes and exploits the north country to benefit other communities in the south. It is told from the point of view of one of the central characters. Angel is 17 when she returns home, trying to get a sense of her past and the origin of the scars that disfigure her face. Her quest for identity and information quickly broadens into larger, and more substantial concerns for the people of Adam's Rib. As she finds her place there, she gains perspective leading to commitments that reveal her developing inner strength. She learns that her individual identity finds its best expression in terms of her relationships within a community that encompasses other people, land and water, and all life.Through the development of Angel's perspective, and the ideas and actions of the women who become her mentors, author Linda Hogan puts forth an astoundingly powerful vision of the relationships among humans and the natural world that sustain life. She does this with a richly detailed text that even readers who may not share Hogan's perspective will find the book enjoyable and provocative.Hogan's _Solar Storms_ offers a reminder that the best stories are critical to human life not only for the pleasure of the text, but because they motivate ethical life. _Solar Storms_ merits recognition as a modern classic of American literature.

A beautiful, sometimes painful journey: truly wonderful.

This is the first book I have read by Hogan. I was very impressed by her writing. She uses lovely words and creates wonderful images for the reader. This is a very important book and having read it has increased by awareness of Native Americans' plight. The damage to their culture, their personhood and to the earth (the land)with all the animals and plants is painful and horrid. This is a deeply felt book and the writing will speak to your heart.

A book in which almost every line is pregnant with wisdom.

This book is about the journey which each person must take in life, the journey to knowing oneself. Incredibly written with beautiful insights, this book is a must for anyone who needs to be inspired in life. Practically every line is pregnant with wisdom and eloquence, yet not encumbered by being overly philosophical. It contains truths which can be simply understood by the reader. It has helped teach me (the reviewer) the value of inner quiet as well as outer quiet. In a world where all we do has instant reactions and ramifications, we could all use a dose of the kind of loving enlightenment this book has to offer.

Touching in its powerful beauty.....

I thought I could not read anything as beautiful by a Native American woman than Luci Tapahonso's works, or Joy Harjo's works. Until now. Linda Hogan's words evoke powerful images of female beauty. She overturns European myths and traditions by making all her major characters women. These are no "shrinking violets" but women who make it on their own; they are not simply biding their time until some man comes along, but they are active in the business of living life. This is no man-hating treatise either, for men are welcome, if they fit in. Some do, some don't, and some learn that loving a woman means being everything she needs you to be, not just what you think she needs. Hogan also turns physical scarring into beauty, as Angel learns to love herself despite her inner and outward scars. Hogan even takes the most commonplace of anti-feminine insults, "That's just like a woman," and turns it into an expression of strength. Yes, it IS just like a woman, and that's what makes her powerful, beautiful and desirable to all. Read SOLAR STORMS and learn a lot, about yourself as a woman or a man, about yourself as a Western "improver" of nature, and about yourself as a human being. Love for everything and everyone is the secret joy in this novel, and you will finish it with a sense that you have achieved something of this