Novel: Reservation Blues

Overview
Reservation Blues is a 1995 novel by Sherman Alexie that blends realism, satire, and Native mythology to tell the story of a ragtag rock band formed on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Familiar characters from Alexie’s earlier stories, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Victor Joseph, and Junior Polatkin, take center stage, joined by sisters Chess and Checkers Warm Water from the Flathead Reservation. Their music, haunted by history and animated by magic, becomes a vehicle for hope, desire, grief, and the costs of survival in contemporary Native life.

Plot
The novel opens when the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, still fleeing the diabolical bargain that made his name, wanders onto the Spokane Reservation carrying an enchanted guitar. Thomas, a storyteller and dreamer, takes the instrument and, with the volatile Victor and the fragile, sardonic Junior, forms the band Coyote Springs. Their rough, electrified songs, fed by Johnson’s ghostly chords and Thomas’s tales, quickly earn local buzz. Big Mom, a timeless spiritual elder on a nearby mountain, becomes their guardian presence, hinting that music can heal, but only if it does not repeat the old violences.

As the band tours bars and powwows, Chess and Checkers join as singers, steadying Thomas and challenging Victor and Junior’s self-destruction. A Seattle showcase draws the attention of Cavalry Records, run by executives named George Wright and Phil Sheridan, pointed echoes of U.S. Army officers who waged war on Native people. The label promises opportunity while pressuring the band to package their identity, demanding something both “authentic” and marketable. Betty and Veronica, two ambitious white musicians entwined romantically and musically with Victor and Junior, are brought into the orbit, deepening jealousies and cultural tensions.

In New York, Coyote Springs is nudged toward a caricatured sound and sidelined by studio politics. Their big industry showcase is undercut, by sabotage or indifference, it hardly matters, and the label pivots to courting Betty and Veronica. The band is dropped. The collapse exposes every old wound: family histories of violence, the lure of alcohol, and the shock of a dream briefly visible then yanked away.

Characters and bonds
Thomas is the band’s conscience, earnest and stubborn, believing stories and songs can stitch the past to a livable present. Victor wields charisma and rage, using bravado to mask trauma. Junior, witty and wounded, cannot outrun his despair. Chess offers fierce love and pragmatism, while Checkers, devout and yearning, struggles with the attentions of Father Arnold, a white priest tormented by his own doubts and desires. Robert Johnson’s hunted soul and Big Mom’s ancient steadiness frame the band’s mortal strivings, reminding them that every song is a negotiation with history.

Themes and tone
The novel tracks the commodification of Native culture, the seductions and betrayals of the American music industry, and the grind of intergenerational trauma. Humor and tenderness leaven the pain; dreams and visions bleed into daily life. The recurring imagery of cavalry and record executives, devils and guitars, horses and headlights, links past massacres to modern varieties of exploitation. Music promises transcendence, yet the novel insists on the stubborn reality of grief, addiction, and survival.

Ending
After the band’s implosion, Junior dies by suicide, a loss that echoes across the reservation. Victor, shattered, faces the emptiness beneath his swagger. Big Mom wrests the guitar’s curse away, releasing Robert Johnson from his long flight. Father Arnold leaves his post. Thomas and Chess choose each other and prepare to leave the reservation, not in rejection but in search of a different future. Checkers stays with Big Mom, turning toward a steadier faith. The final notes hold no easy triumph; they carry a battered hope, the knowledge that stories and songs endure even when the band does not.