Quiet Until the Thaw

A Novel

By: Alexandra Fuller

Narrated by: Alma Cuervo

The debut novel from the best-selling author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and Leaving Before the Rains Come.

Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation, South Dakota. Two Native American cousins, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson, though bound by blood and by land, find themselves at odds as they grapple with the implications of their shared heritage. When escalating anger toward the injustices, historical and current, inflicted upon the Lakota people by the federal government leads to tribal divisions and infighting, the cousins go in separate directions: Rick chooses the path of peace; You Choose, violence.

Years pass, and as You Choose serves time in prison, Rick finds himself raising twin baby boys orphaned at birth in his meadow. As the twins mature from infants to young men, Rick immerses the boys in their ancestry, telling wonderful and terrible tales of how the whole world came to be and affirming their place in the universe as the result of all who have come before and will come behind. But when You Choose returns to the reservation after three decades behind bars, his anger manifests, forever disrupting the lives of Rick and the boys.

A complex tale that spans generations and geography, Quiet Until the Thaw conjures the implications of an oppressed history, how we are bound not just to immediate family but to all who have come before and will come after us, and, most of all, to the notion that everything was always, and is always, connected.

©2017 Alexandra Fuller (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“A delicately calibrated tuning fork, resonating at a cosmic pitch…awe-inspiring.... This is an ardent, original and beautifully wrought book.” (The New York Times Book Review)

“Fuller’s keen sense of engagement with a land ‘to which you now don’t belong’, and her place as an outsider, make her a sympathetic storyteller. Her prose shimmers and vibrates with life in this excellent novel.” (Publishers Weekly)

“Fuller achieves what every creative writer with political and social concerns hopes to achieve, where the political issues of her text do not overwhelm her story with a heavy hand, and yet they are simultaneously a part of the visible and invisible forces at work on the characters’ journeys. And what journeys they undertake.... In telling a story whose form embraces the Lakota Sioux’s philosophies and distinctive life cycles, Quiet Until the Thaw doesn’t just give us an authentic tale of a Native American people’s journey. It offers up a distinctive view of America, and perhaps even pleas for a new understanding of how great American novels can be written.” (Paste Magazine)

better written than read

the story is fine, but the way it is presented in fits and starts and with explanations of some of the Indian terms makes it difficult as an audiobook. I would get the Kindle edition.

A look in the Mirror

Very entertaining and well worth a listen.. We have forgotten the history of wrongs that have been trust on Native Americans, and point our fingers at other groups and countries, this is a good reminder that Apartheid was based almost word for word on the Indian reservation system. Mohican Sun & Sun City smae thing.

Widow in to Lakota Soux

Very good book. Short interesting captures. The writer lived with the Tribe and had a real feeling for their culture. The narrator was fantastic.

Loved this best narration ever

This was a magnificent book. Maybe one of my favorite books ever. Very enjoyable. Wish her other books were like this.

Very hard to connect with characters

I can't get past Chapter 8. Lacks character development seen in this authors other novels. I wanted to like it, but I am choosing another book.