Will I love Winter in the Blood?

The first time I finished reading this book, I felt ambushed. The description is breathtaking and the dialogue is hilarious.

So much of the book is surreal: The main character hunts for a runaway girlfriend who’s absconded with his electric razor (which is useless; it has no cord). A woman at a bar blows smoke rings without a cigarette. A guy known only as “airplane man” winds up nabbed, with a large plush bear, by the FBI—and the main character’s major epiphany is sparked by a horse fart. Then, suddenly, near the end, I cried so hard the words blurred.… show more.

Perhaps Winter In The Blood is Welch's finest novel, though I hesitate to overlook Fools Crow. Like Hurston's work, the language in Winter In The Blood is raw, simple, and to the point. In this book, Welch offers a caveat to whites when he says, "I have seen works written about Indians by whites... but only an Indian knows who he is. If he has grown up on a reservation he will naturally write about what he knows. And hopefully he will have the toughness and fairness to present his material in a way that is not manufactured by… show more.