Ghost Dances: Proving Up On The Great Plains by Josh Garrett-Davis
A Review
Garrett-Davis took this reviewer on a journey of self-examination and reflection of his life as it is now and what it was for him as he grew up on the Great Plains of South Dakota. A memoir unlike any that you may pick up or read again, it is a blend of history of the late nineteenth century interlaced with pre-internet life, of a young boy’s discovery of counter-culture heavy rock music in the days when MTV actually played music videos.
Garrett-Davis wistfully recalls the angst of young boyhood when his parents divorced after unsuccessfully trying to maintain a record store stocked with music they believed represented the rage of a generation against the machine of state and federal policy, even as Garrett-Davis’ book details his own rage against the machine of a lesbian mother and a distant workaholic father.
Ghost Dances captures the longing of many Great Plains youth to leave the wind, the plains, and the open skies behind for a cultured and contemporary life in any city. Garrett-Davis’ visits to his grandmother in Minnesota
The history of the state, the Great Plains , the settlers and the native peoples which Garrett-Davis peppers Ghost Dances throughout seem an attempt to make the hardships of all, his own, while the author captures perfectly the dreams to escape, he fails to capture the feelings of those who choose to stay. Garrett-Davis includes stats in Ghost Dances about out-migration, even as he acknowledges moving out of state himself.
In the end, the book is about confirming the character of himself as well as the people who grow up on the plains. It is the wind, the grass, and the sky, the very openness which (at least compared to people not from the plains) imbibes wholesomeness, openness, and perhaps honesty (even a steady wariness of small town politics) in the people who dream of leaving.
This reviewer loves to listen to history at the table of relatives, descendants of people who were here first. This writer loves to scroll through the state archives records and papers and stroll through the dusty stacks of memories of bygone days. This reviewer generally prefers to read biographies instead of memoirs. This writer believes that the very strengths of Ghost Dances, the inclusion of actual historical events is what separates Ghost Dances from the regular self-indulgences of a typical memoir.
Beware reader. This isn’t for everyone and it shouldn’t be. It’s about life on the plains after Little House On The Prairie…with MTV, broken family ties, massacre, He-Man escapism, return of the bison, idealized politics heaped unto a young mind, and love of late 80s and early 90s hard rock here, there, then and now.
Gratify yourself, reader, with a copy of Ghost Dances today. Visit Josh Garrett-Davis’ website at www.joshgarrettdavis.com.
