House Made of Dawn

The novel House Made of Dawn, by N. Scott Momaday, was first published in 1968. Heralded as a major landmark in the emergence of Indigenous American literature, the novel won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. House Made of Dawn blends fictional and nonfictional elements to depict life on an Indigenous American reservation like the one where Momaday grew up.

This guide uses an eBook version of the 2018 First Harper Perennial Modern Classics (50th Anniversary) edition.

Content Warning: This guide describes alcohol addiction.

Plot Summary

Abel is the young protagonist of House Made of Dawn. After serving in World War II, he returns to Walatowa (also called Jemez), the small town in New Mexico where he grew up. The war has traumatized Abel, and he drinks so heavily that he barely recognizes his grandfather when he returns to his grandfather’s farm. He stays with Francisco, his grandfather, and visits the local priest, Father Olguin. Through the priest, Abel meets Angela, a young white woman who has come to the area to visit the local mineral springs. After Abel does chores for Angela, such as chopping wood, she initiates a romantic affair with him. Angela is unhappy and hopes that an affair with Abel will distract her.

The return to Walatowa prompts Abel to reflect on his childhood. Francisco raised him after the deaths of his mother and his older brother, Vidal. In the community, Francisco was known as a hunter and a practitioner of Indigenous American spiritual traditions. Francisco is now old, and his lame leg prevents him from hunting. Meanwhile, Abel’s traumatic experiences in the war have severed any connection he once felt to his ancestors’ spirituality. Angela promises Abel that she’ll help him leave Walatowa and find work elsewhere. His animal-like qualities fascinate her. Their affair helps Abel realize that his return to Walatowa hasn’t gone well. He no longer recognizes the town as home. While participating in a traditional ceremony, he’s embarrassed by a local man named Juan Reyes. To the locals, Reyes is an Indigenous American man and an albino known as the “white man.” Abel decides that Reyes is a witch and stabs him after drinking heavily in a bar. The police arrest Abel and send him to jail—and he’s found guilty of murder.

More than six years after the incident outside the bar, Abel is released from prison as part of a program to relocate Indigenous American people. In Los Angeles, he meets a group of Indigenous American men led by a priest named Reverend John Big Bluff Tosamah. Reverend Tosamah refers to himself as Priest of the Sun and tells stories about the Kiowa people. He mocks Abel for his inability to integrate into the modern world, calling him a longhair. Abel meets Ben Benally when both work at the same factory in Los Angeles. Like Abel, Ben was raised on a reservation. When Abel meets a white social worker named Milly, they develop a romantic relationship, but Abel continues to struggle with alcohol addiction. One day, he wakes up on a beach after a night of heavy drinking. His body is badly beaten, but he doesn’t remember what happened. As he lies on the beach, a rush of memories overwhelms him. He thinks about his experiences of the war, his time in prison, and his relationship with Milly. When he finally picks himself up off the beach, he stumbles back to the small apartment that he and Ben share.

Ben helps Abel catch a train from Los Angeles back to New Mexico. The perspective switches to Ben, who gives an account of Abel’s life in California as he understands it. Abel’s time in the city has been marked by pain. Reverend Tosamah mocked Abel on numerous occasions, particularly during a game of cards when many other Indigenous American men were in attendance. Abel wanted to fight back against his tormenter but was too drunk. He slipped further into alcohol addiction, spending two days drinking so heavily that he missed work. He sobered up long enough to go to his place of employment, where his boss wasn’t pleased to see him. After being harassed for missing work, Abel quit the job. The loss of the job made Abel’s problems worse. He drank even more, spending most of his days inebriated. Desperate for money, he asked for loans from Milly and Ben. He spent the days lounging around the apartment in an angry, drunken haze. Eventually, Ben decided to act. He became frustrated with his roommate’s behavior and threw him out. During this time, a police officer named Martinez was hassling Abel. Martinez was corrupt; one night, he stole money from Abel and beat him with his nightstick. Abel decided to take his revenge. However, he was too inebriated to fight, and Martinez beat him so badly that he had to go to the hospital. Ben visited Abel in the hospital and called Angela to ask her to visit Abel to lift his spirits, as he helped her many years before.

Abel returns to Walatowa once again. By now, Francisco needs his help. Abel takes care of his dying grandfather. As they sit together, Francisco tells stories from his own life. In one story, he hunts a bear as a young man. On a rare venture out of the house, Francisco leads Abel to a place where their people once held an annual tradition called the race of the dead. He tries to convince Abel of the importance of remaining spiritually connected to their people’s past. Francisco dies, and Abel prepares his body for the burial. On the day of his grandfather’s death, Abel remembers the story his grandfather told him about the tradition their ancestors practiced called the race of the dead, in which a man waits until dawn and then runs as fast as he can while singing songs for both himself and his ancestors. The race of the dead takes place that morning. By joining with the other runners, the race helps Abel feel as though he’s reconnecting at last with his people and discovering his place in the world, though he lacks the in-depth understanding of his race that belonged to Francisco.