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Eric Gansworth. If I Ever Get Out of Here. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2013. isbn: 978-0-545-41730-3. 359 pp.
"Paul McCartney had sung just a few Beatles songs during the show. One of them had been 'Yesterday about longing for an easier, earlier life. On its surface, it was a breakup song. But its perfection at capturing impossible losses made it one of the world's best-known songs. You didn't need to have someone dump you to long for a time when your life was easier. You could fill in your own sadness" (158-59). So narrates the protagonist of Onondaga author and artist Eric Gansworth's young adult novel If I Ever Get out of Here. One could make a similar argument about this book: its perfection at capturing adolescent struggles makes it an incredibly rich work. You don't need to be American Indian to understand it. You can fill in your own experiences. In fact, the universal themes on which the novel focuses-such as friendship, belonging, and adolescence-are part of what make the book so accessible. That being said, Gansworth's novel is undeniably just as much about what it means to be American Indian as it is about what it means to be a teenager, especially given the careful attention he dedicates to various facets of American Indian history and culture.
If I Ever Get out of Here takes readers back in time to 1975 (the year before the United States' bicentennial) on the Tuscarora Nation's reservation in New York, where unpopular seventh-grader Lewis Blake is about to start his second year at the nearby "white school." At the novel's onset, Lewis has one goal: to put an end to his tenure as "the Invisible Boy" (his self-appointed nickname) and make at least one friend. In a scene that calls to mind both the history of Indian boarding schools and US military procedures, the book opens with Lewis having his braid cut off and his remaining hair buzzed short. This sets the tone for the rest of the novel: through Lewis's quest to figure out who he is, who he wants...