Like many of Jim Harrison's books, "Dalva" was written in a tin-roofed cabin surrounded by dogs and horses roaming around at their leisure. One even has the feeling that while writing with one hand (Harrison used a fountain pen to the end) with the other he was drowning a rattlesnake. His characters seem to be built from this tension, almost always leaning towards the West, traveling through the wild immensities of the American continent, and far from the big cities. The protagonist of this book is Dalva, and the impression she made on her day was such that countless women with that name can be found today in the United States. "Dalva" is, after all, Jim Harrison's best novel, as he himself, critics and readers have unanimously recognized. It is the story of a woman who, in order to regain control over her own life, moves to the old family ranch in Nebraska. Dalva is forty-five years old, she is beautiful and fearless, and has undoubtedly had a life full of lovers and adventures. But now begins a journey that will take her back to the bosom of her family, to the memory of that half-Sioux boy with whom she fell in love in her youth, of that mixed-race son who was taken from her at birth and of that great-grandfather, a wise pioneer lost in the Great Plains, whose diaries recount the bloody annihilation of the Indians. The history of her family is therefore linked to that of an oppressed people, from the Civil War to the Wounded Knee massacre and the Vietnam War. It is the violent history of America, through which Dalva seeks a balm to heal that thing we call the soul. Dalva looks a lot like a wild animal and she is injured. She seeks shelter but takes out her fang, because she loves life.
