Angie Elita Newell's All I See Is Violence is a historical novel about the Battle of Little Bighorn, colonization, and its cultural aftermath. The power and rawness of the story are head-spinning, but its grounded and breathing characters lead a clear and compelling narrative through the carnage, allowing Newell, who belongs to the Liidlii Due First Nation, to achieve moments of tenderness, clarity, and beauty.
In the first of three braided narratives, readers will come to love the novel's landscape through the eyes of Little Wolf, a young Cheyenne woman who must decide whether to fight--and kill--for her homeland. Here, Newell's descriptions come alive with the kind of prose that opens a doorway into snowy woods.
In a 1972 thread, Nancy Swiftfox raises a family descended from Little Wolf. She tries to navigate the racism and societal cruelty threatening to crush her and her four boys. The cultural backdrop is the American Indian Movement, which Nancy's son joins. He is a veteran struggling with his own trauma and participates in a protest at the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre.
The final part of the braid, set in the same time frame as Little Wolf's story, follows General Armstrong Custer in the days leading up to the Battle of Little Bighorn. But it's Nancy who powers the heart of the story as she tries to reckon with the ways her life is damaged by atrocity and generational trauma, seeking a way forward that might provide, if not healing for her and her family, at least survival. --Carol Caley, writer