House Made of Dawn is a 1968 novel by N. Scott Momaday.
The protagonist is Abel, a Native American Kiowa from Walatowa, a reservation in New Mexico. The story opens in 1945 with Abel having come home from World War II and meeting his only family, his grandfather Francisco. Abel has a major drinking problem, which seems to have been exacerbated by trauma suffered during the war. He feels alienated from his culture and his old home. Eventually he kills a man and goes to prison. 6 1/2 years pass, and in early 1952 Abel is out of prison and working in a factory in Los Angeles—but he still has demons to conquer.
Tropes:
- Albinos Are Freaks: Abel is bested at horsemanship during a festival by an albino. The albino may not actually be evil, but Abel thinks he is evil, describing his "great evil mouth" and being repulsed by the albino's "blue lips". Abel winds up stabbing the albino to death.
- Anachronic Order: There are many flashbacks and the narrative skips around quite a bit. Abel is shown in Los Angeles having a lover, a white woman named Millie; much later she's revealed to be a social worker who first met Abel when she was helping him get settled in Los Angeles. Abel is first shown waking up on a beach in L.A., beaten half to death, in a flash-forward well before the main narrative gets to the at point. Near the end of the book there are some long flashbacks from Francisco's POV of Abel as a child.
- Battle in the Rain: Abel and the albino meet in a bar before going out in the pouring rain for the specific purpose of fighting. Abel stabs the albino to death.
- Bookends:
- An undated prologue has Abel at home on the reservation, running. The last scene of the novel finds him back home on the reservation, running after the death of his grandfather—in other words, the same scene as the prologue.
- Abel's reservation is described as a "house made of dawn" in the first line of the novel and again in the last.
- Butter Face: Millie, the social worker who becomes Abel's lover in Los Angeles. The narration specifically states that "She was plain in the face" but "her body was supple and ripe" with "big breasts" and a hip-swiveling walk.
- Death of a Child: Millie recounts to Abel the great trauma of her life, when her daughter Carrie died of "fever" at the age of four.
- Dying Dream: An extended sequence near the end is a long dying dream from Francisco, where he dreams of going on a bear hunt as a young man and then having sex with a local woman.
- Higher Understanding Through Drugs: Tosamah, the "Priest of the Sun" who preaches to other Native Americans in Los Angeles, conducts a peyote ritual. This is the scene where Abel's friend Ben, high on peyote, sees "a house made of dawn." (Tosamah expressly rejects assimilation and the white man's ways.)
- I'm Cold... So Cold...: Abel comes back home to find Francisco dying. The old man mutters a lot on his sick bed, including the words "mucho, mucho frio."
- Second-Person Narration: Towards the end there are couple of flashback scenes told from Abel's POV in second-person, where "you" remember your childhood growing up with your grandfather Francisco, and lso one summer where "you" came home to the reservation from school and romanced a pretty girl.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Abel comes home traumatized from his time fighting in World War II. He has a nightmare of seeing dead bodies and body parts littering some battlefield, before a tank bears down on him.
- Switching P.O.V.: Abel gets the most POV in third-person, but there's also a first-person flashback from Millie, and Ben narrates much of the second half of the book, and their are sections from the POV of Francisco, and a Second-Person Narration sequence, and others.
- Time Skip: After Abel kills the albino, the story skips from the fall of 1945 forward to early 1952, and finds Abel in Los Angeles after he served a prison term.
- Title Drop: Abel's home on the reservation is described as a "house made of dawn" in both the first line and the last (the ending scene being a repeat of the the beginning). Between those two moments, Abel's friend Ben sees "a house made of dawn" during a peyote ritual. Then later Ben explains how the phrase comes from an old Kiowa song that starts "House made of dawn/House made of evening light."
- You Can't Go Home Again: "His return to town had been a failure,", thinks Abel in Walatowa, as he feels alienated from his old home, unable to sing the old songs or talk the old language. Subverted at the end when Abel once more comes home in 1952, buries his grandfather, goes running, and once again feels connected to the land.
