THE SOULS OF OTHERS
The Souls of Others is a powerful essay collection by American Book Award winner Shann Ray. Ray depicts the American west as both magnificent and destitute. The mountains are alive. The people are gritty and resilient. Nature offers its bounty but never gives it with ease. Ray, having spent part of his childhood on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, expertly paints a place of family, sorrow, and a connection to Mother Nature that so many Americans have lost.
Nonfiction/ 978-1-956692-00-6/ January 31, 2022
The Souls of Others is a powerful essay collection by American Book Award winner Shann Ray. Ray depicts the American west as both magnificent and destitute. The mountains are alive. The people are gritty and resilient. Nature offers its bounty but never gives it with ease. Ray, having spent part of his childhood on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, expertly paints a place of family, sorrow, and a connection to Mother Nature that so many Americans have lost.
Nonfiction/ 978-1-956692-00-6/ January 31, 2022
The Souls of Others is a powerful essay collection by American Book Award winner Shann Ray. Ray depicts the American west as both magnificent and destitute. The mountains are alive. The people are gritty and resilient. Nature offers its bounty but never gives it with ease. Ray, having spent part of his childhood on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, expertly paints a place of family, sorrow, and a connection to Mother Nature that so many Americans have lost.
Nonfiction/ 978-1-956692-00-6/ January 31, 2022
Praise for THE SOULS OF OTHERS
This is a multi-genre memoir, combining genres of essays, interviews, academic research, memoir, and poetry. The book opens with a paean to basketball, and I love the joy and grace of how he describes the sport -- makes me ache with nostalgia for the squeak of sneakers on the hardwood. But there are so many deaths among his friends on the Rez, and he doesn't shy away from describing how they're stabbed, drown, shot, and wrecked. He's haunted by the private past with the death of his friends, and the public past with genocide against the Cheyenne, and he also brings up his Czech heritage to contrast the American genocide with European genocide. Ray's broken and remade relationship with his father made me weep, and I love the relationship he depicts with his wife -- listening to her tender, wise counsel. And the book really focuses on stories of forgiveness -- forgiveness for a mother, for fathers, for murderers. In spite of all this, I think the book is shot through with hope. With optimism. For what is possible in our relationships and what might be possible in our collective future. If you'd like to meditate on the deepest part of our human soul, buy this book and dwell on it.
—John Matthew Fox of BookFox
About SHANN RAY
Poet, short story writer, and novelist Shann Ray grew up in Montana and Alaska and spent part of his childhood on the Northern Cheyenne reservation. His work has been featured in Poetry, Esquire, McSweeney's, Prairie Schooner, Big Sky Journal, Narrative, and Salon. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and winner of the American Book Award and the High Plains Book Award, he is the author of American Masculine, American Copper, Atomic Theory 432, Balefire, Sweetclover, and Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity. A clinical psychologist specializing in the psychology of men, he teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University. Because of his wife and three daughters, he believes in love.
