Flight: A tale of Redemption

By Lisa Nunez As an author, Sherman Alexie deals with unattractive realities as often as he paints poetic pictures. As a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian who grew up on a Washington reservation, he knows that there are many truths comprising an Indian's identity. From this knowledge comes Zits, the teenage narrator of Flight, Alexie's just published novel. Abandoned by his father at his birth and orphaned by his mother's death when he was 6, Zits is a foster child. Because he is half White, no effort is made to place him in Indian homes. But the families he is placed with see him only as an Indian. "I don't know any other Native Americans except the homeless Indians who wander around downtown Seattle," he says. "Everything I learned about Indians, I learned from television." At first meeting, Zits seems bent on self-sabotage. He is the stereotypical troubled boy: angry, violent, destructive, and hopeless. "I am a blank sky," he says. "I am a human solar eclipse."  Rather than return a civil "good morning" to his 20th foster father, Zits shoves his foster mother against the wall and storms out into a street fight, which lands him in jail — again. While incarcerated, he meets a manipulative White boy who convinces him that the answer lies in extreme violence. Only when Zits takes a bankful of hostages, kills a man, and is himself killed does his real journey begin. Zits spins across time and space, through history, and in and out of different lives. He travels without will and without foreknowledge of where he'll land. He continues to be himself as he inhabits the bodies, thoughts, and memories of others. He tours Indian history and White history, learning some surprising and previously undiscovered truths about the past. Zits wakes up as a White FBI agent sent to quell Indian uprisings in Idaho in 1974. He becomes an Indian preteen at Custer's last stand. He morphs into a White cavalryman tracking Indians. He transforms into a pilot who unwittingly helped the Sept. 11 terrorists. Inside each reality, Zits tries to cope, to understand, and to do what is right. "Of course," he observes, "when you are a time-traveling mass murderer, you can't really expect things to work out as planned." With each leap and every bad ending, he discovers more about himself and about his place in the world.  Alexie's genius allows him to load each scenario with fear, irony, pathos, and humor. Zits sees that he is both Indian and White. He also sees that he is neither one, but, rather, simply a human being. In his definitive incarnation, Zits lives his father's life — and sees his own future. He finds an existence from which death would be a welcome relief. Becoming himself again, reliving the few seconds before his shooting spree, he realizes that he does have a choice and a chance. In the final line of the book, Zits divulges his real name. The reader desperately hopes it proves that he has made this reality his last.