The Forgetters: Stories

A tender, astonishing, and richly beautiful story cycle about remembering our shared histories and repairing the world.

Perched atop Gravity Hill, two sistersQuestion Woman and Answer Womanrecall stories from dawn to dusk. Question Woman cannot remember a single story except by asking to hear it again, and Answer Woman can tell all the stories but cannot think of them unless she is asked. Together they recount the journeys of the Forgetters, so that we may all remember.

Unforgettable characters pass through these pages: a boy who opens the clouds in the sky, a young woman who befriends three enigmatic people who might also be animals, two village leaders who hold a storytelling contest. All are in search of a crucial lesson from the past, one that will help them repair the rifts in their own lives.

Told in the classic style of Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok creation stories, this book vaults from the sacred time before this time to the recent present and even the near future. Heralded as a a fine storyteller by Joy Harjo, celebrated writer Greg Sarris offers us these tales in a new genre of his own making.

The Forgetters is a compact masterpiececomforting and startling, inspiring reveries and deepening our love of the world we share.