Raymond Abbott
Raymond Abbott's books include Indian Stories (2006) and That Day in Gordon (1986). He was born in Massachusetts and now lives in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award in Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Kentucky Arts Council. A social worker, he lived for many years on the Sioux Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, an experience that has fueled much of his writing.
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That Day in GordonA Novel
Still behind him was that damn coyote. A determined critter, he was. He hadn’t caught sight of him for at least an hour, but he felt his presence out there. At first he had feared him. Now he didn’t. If circumstances were different he might have welcomed the company of a coyote on a lonely walk on a snowy night. At best, the coyote’s presence was disconcerting. He was puzzled. Why would a coyote be so determined? Poor animal. It had been such a hard winter for man and beast.
That Day in Gordon:A Novel -
That Day in GordonA Novel
He had got to drinking after Laurene died, he was so torn up about her death, and somebody at the Bureau of Indian Affairs came along and took his kids. Some social worker. By the time he sobered up, and that was several weeks later, he was told he had signed papers giving up his kids permanently and they were in a home near Mobridge, South Dakota. A Catholic home. And he couldn’t go up to visit them. It wasn’t allowed, they told him. He tried once to get in to see these two, a boy and a girl, like the two he had now. He never succeeded. He still wondered about them a lot. He knew they had to be mostly grown by this time, and he wondered if they ever thought about him.
That Day in Gordon:A Novel -
That Day in GordonA Novel
My God, he thought again. Now it is murder. It has gone that far. Before, he was a drunk, sometimes a disagreeable drunk. But he was a drunk who didn’t or hadn’t gone around killing people. Now he had. He was little better than Little Bald Eagle and others like him who he had told Doris Mae were evil and to be avoided. And to think he had bragged to Bennion how all the whiskey and wine in his life had not brought him so low that he had never needed to beg. And now he had gone so much lower and killed a man.
That Day in Gordon:A Novel
“A fiery, grim portrayal of the contest of wills over some of this country's most prized reservation territory . . . Significant, engaging Native-American history, sprinkled with a bit of Ian Fleming, make for an entertaining and enlightening read.” —Kirkus Reviews [on Black Hills Summer]
“As fatalistic as Camus’ The Stranger . . . A strong debut and deeply moving.” —Kirkus Reviews [on That Day in Gordon]
“What other non-Indian author in this country writes about the sad First People with the life-like intimacy of Raymond Abbott? . . . A short novel much bigger than its size.” —Seymour Krim [on That Day in Gordon]
Selected Works
