Sherman Alexie's darkly humorous story collection weaves memory, fantasy, and stark reality to powerfully evoke life on the Spokane Indian Reservation. The twenty-four linked tales in Alexie's debut collection—an instant classic—paint an unforgettable portrait of life on and around the Spokane Indian Reservation, a place where "Survival = Anger x Imagination," where HUD houses and generations of privation intertwine with history, passion, and myth.   We follow Thomas Builds-the-Fire, the longwinded storyteller no one really listens to; his half-hearted nemesis, Victor, the basketball star turned recovering alcoholic; and a wide cast of other vividly drawn characters on a haunting journey filled with humor and sorrow, resilience and resignation, dreams and reality. Alexie's unadulterated honesty and boundless compassion come together in a poetic vision of a world in which the gaps between past and present are not really gaps after all.   The basis for the acclaimed 1998 feature film Smoke Signals,the Chicago Tribune noted, " The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven . . . is for the American Indian what Richard Wright's Native Son was for the black American in 1940."   The collection received a Special Citation for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction.   This ebook edition features a new prologue from the author, as well as an illustrated biography and rare photos from Sherman Alexie's personal collection.