Praise for LeAnne Howe:

"Howe's voice is so utterly unique, comparisons can't do her justice. . . . This volume is a gift from a rich place-wise, generous, exciting, and completely fresh." --Susan Power

November, 1873. Mary Todd Lincoln is confined to the Bellevue Place Sanitarium for insanity, where she talks to the Savage Indian and the sentient Rope, and both re- minders of her husband's decision to hang thirty-eight Dakota in 1862 Mankato, the largest mass execution in United States history.

Part theater of the absurd, part highly stylized biography, part historical archive, this daring cross-genre narrative traces the limits of one woman's sanity, the betrayals of a family, and the contradictions and crimes on which the United States is founded.

From Savage Conversations

Tonight, let us hoist the catafalque over a new grave. Hold my hands above the dank earth
As the Nightjars serenade. Oh what a great heart smasher you are, Mr. Lincoln. Adieu, my
confessor, my all-in-all, lover, protector, ghost husband.
Turning to Savage Indian.
Wishing for nothing, not even breath, Take the Jlint knife, cut me, I dare you.

LeAnne Howe is a poet, fiction writer, filmmaker, and play wright and a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Her honors include a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writer's Circle of the Americas, an American Book Award, and a United States Artists Ford Fellowship. She is the Eidson Distinguished Professor of American Literature in English at the University of Georgia.