Ten Indians - Softcover

Bell, Madison Smartt

3.75

97 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140268464 ISBN 13: 9780140268461

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1997

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When child psychologist Mike Devlin opens a Tae Kwon Do school near the Baltimore housing projects, the brutality of the streets, a series of violent deaths, and deadly misunderstandings shock him into seeing how minimal his influence in life has been. Reprint. Tour.

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From the Inside Flap:

From the Haiti of 200 years ago in his most recent, highly acclaimed novel, All Souls' Rising, Bell returns to our own moment, to the racial lines that have riven contemporary America. An edgy, powerful, deeply affecting story of possibility, Ten Indians tells the fast-paced, complex tale of a man who opens a Tae Kwon Do school in a black neighborhood in inner-city Baltimore--and finds himself compelled to enter the lives of his students when the brutality of streets spills into his life.

From Booklist:

Bell is a powerhouse. Just a year after the release of All Souls' Rising a novel about Haiti that landed him on Granta's "Best Young American Novelists" list--he's back with a new, very lean and mean novel much in keeping with his signature themes. Bell, whose inner compass always points to the highest concentration of tension, is one of the few white writers to consistently explore relationships between whites and blacks both socially and as individuals. Here he sets up a dramatic dynamic between Devlin, a white psychologist specializing in the treatment of children, and a group of young black men and women living in the projects in Baltimore. Married and the father of a 17-year-old daughter, Devlin is both savvy and rash and, we suspect, self-destructive and possibly worse. Weary of his privileged clients, he decides to open a tae kwon do school in a dangerous inner-city neighborhood. Initially, his school is a great success. Devlin tells his heavily armed, drug-dealing, but, at heart, sweet-natured students to treat the school as a sanctuary, a "place where things make sense." But discipline and agility are no match for firepower, and Devlin is in way over his head. This is a troubling and profoundly ambivalent drama about violence and the urge to do good that reminds readers, sadly, that there are no simple, elegant answers to complicated, messy problems. Donna Seaman

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