Winter in the Blood

By: James Welch, Joy Harjo - foreword, Louise Erdrich - introduction

Narrated by: Darrell Dennis, Tanis Parenteau

Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

A contemporary classic from a major writer of the Native American renaissance - "Brilliant, brutal and, in my opinion, Welch's best work." (Tommy Orange, The Washington Post)

During his life, James Welch came to be regarded as a master of American prose, and his first novel, Winter in the Blood, is one of his most enduring works. The narrator of this beautiful, often disquieting novel is a young Native American man living on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. Sensitive and self-destructive, he searches for something that will bind him to the lands of his ancestors but is haunted by personal tragedy, the dissolution of his once proud heritage, and Montana's vast emptiness. Winter in the Blood is an evocative and unforgettable work of literature that will continue to move and inspire anyone who encounters it.

For more than 70 years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Listeners trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

©1974 James Welch (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"A nearly flawless novel about human life... Few books in any year speak so unanswerably, make their own local terms so thoroughly ours." (Reynolds Price, The New York Times Book Review)

"For some readers this will be the most significant piece of Indian writing they have yet encountered; for others it will simply be a brilliant novel." (The New Republic)

"An unnervingly beautiful book." (Roger Sale, The New York Review of Books)

Sort of like

Sort of like a native version of catcher in the rye? Audible needs more words.

Good version of text

The story is well read . Found it more moving than reading the book and easier to follow.

A Classic Of 20th Century Literature

I read this in 1974 when the first edition came out and found it astonishing in so many ways: one of the first novels to take a deep
dive into Native American culture in all its variety and complexity, hatred towards, rivalries within, even self hatred. Now listening to it read by a wonderful narrator, I hear elements of magic realism, spirituality and poetry as well.

Hayver, Montana.

the mispronounciation of "Havre", Montana consistently threw me as a Montana resident. Hah-verr, not Hay-verr.