American Indian Culture and Research Journal

In basketball, we find enough reasons to believe in God ... -Sherman Alexie Since his critically acclaimed early novels, Winter in the Blood (1974) and The Death of Jim Loney (1979) James Welch has firmly established himself as a major fiction writer with, among other titles, his 1990 novel The Indian Lawyer. Sherman Alexie, on the other hand, has only recently broken onto the national literary scene with his two works of fiction, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993) and Reservation Blues (1995). While Alexie’s fiction is characterized by bittersweet humor and detours into the fantastical, Welch continues to write with the assured hand of a master realist. Even though these two authors’ fiction represents the diversity of writing styles in contemporary Native American literature, their recent works share an important theme: the powerful role of basketball in the lives of Indians growing up on reservations.