Lone Ranger...Heaven: Published in 1993, the short stories are interconnected, but unique and can be understood on their own. The stories center around Native Americans on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Thomas Builds-the-fire is one of the central protagonists as is Victor Joseph, who uses both a first person POV, as well as stories he relates as a third-person omniscient narrator.
Alcohol and its abuse becomes a theme in the book. How is one to have a cultural identity when having to interact with the larger majority?
The film Smoke Signals (1998) centers around themes found in the collection. The screenplay was written by Alexie himself.
Dandelion Wine: Published in 1957, although the setting takes place in 1928 in the fictional Green Bluff, Illinois. Dandelion Wine refers is a metaphor for distilling all the joy of summer into a bottle (or in this case a book). The stories, then, all center around characters in this fictional town and have to do with summer. Summer is often used symbolically as "LIFE" and therefore the stories deal with living ones life to the fullest (like we like to romanticize about summer) while being reminded of death. Death makes a life more vivid simply by its presence.
Douglas serves as our protagonist, although he is only an observer in some stories. You may equate him with the author. Other stories (like the Happiness Machine found in chapters 8, 9, 11, 13) and the Lonely One tie in common motifs of machines, fear (part of death) throughout the book, as does the feeling of "waking up"--a particularly Zen experience for Bradbury. He seems to be saying in all of these stories: "This is your only life. Experience it! Don't waste a moment!" A particularly wise statement for all of us.
Farewell Summer is this book's sequel. It came out in 2006. Like most of Bradbury's work, it is about death.
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