If I Ever Get Out of Here

Written by Eric Gansworth

Narrated by Eric Gansworth

"A heart-healing, mocs-on-the-ground story of music, family and friendship." -- Cynthia Leitich Smith, author of TANTALIZE and RAIN IS NOT MY INDIAN NAME

Lewis "Shoe" Blake is used to the joys and difficulties of life on the Tuscarora Indian reservation in 1975: the joking, the Fireball games, the snow blowing through his roof. What he's not used to is white people being nice to him -- people like George Haddonfield, whose family recently moved to town with the Air Force. As the boys connect through their mutual passion for music, especially the Beatles, Lewis has to lie more and more to hide the reality of his family's poverty from George. He also has to deal with the vicious Evan Reininger, who makes Lewis the special target of his wrath. But when everyone else is on Evan's side, how can he be defeated? And if George finds out the truth about Lewis's home -- will he still be his friend?

Acclaimed adult author Eric Gansworth makes his YA debut with this wry and powerful novel about friendship, memory, and the joy of rock 'n' roll.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9780553395457

Eric Gansworth

Eric Gansworth, S·ha-weñ na-sae?, (Onondaga, Eel Clan) is a writer and visual artist, born and raised at Tuscarora Nation. He's been widely published and has had numerous solo and group exhibitions. Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius College, he has also been an NEH Distinguished Visiting Professor at Colgate University. His work has received a Printz Honor Award, was Longlisted for the National Book Award and has received an American Indian Library Association Youth Literature Award, PEN Oakland Award and American Book Award. Gansworth's work has also been supported by the Library of Congress, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Arne Nixon Center, the Saltonstall and Lannan Foundations.

Reviews for If I Ever Get Out of Here

[cheryl_in_cc_nv · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have to be honest. The narrator's voice sometimes sounds unnatural as he educates his friends (and the reader). The book is very educational, and earnest. The bits of actual adventure are relatively brief. And there's hardly any humor to leaven the message.

Otoh, it's fascinating, and important, and will definitely make all the difference to the right boys, and fill appalling empty gaps in collections. Just, teachers, tread lightly, and please don't spoil it for your students by telling them how to dissect it or how to feel about it.

Recommended by me and by Debbie Reese.

(Btw, I now officially feel old. I'm almost the same age as the kids, and this is referred to as historical fiction.)

[jennybeast · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this book a little hard to get into, and then impossible to put down. Lewis is growing up on the rez in the 1970s. Really, the crux of the story is that Lewis is living on the rez, and going to school in the gifted class off reservation. He lives an isolated life, finding comfort only in music, until a boy transfers in and won’t let the idea of friendship go.

Lewis’ struggle to remain true to himself and find a way to interact with the off-reservation world makes for a hard read, but an inspiring one. He is a fierce and intelligent, difficult, lonely boy, who takes a stand when he needs to, regardless of the cost.

[sullywriter_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A wonderfully written, insightful and relatable novel about friendship, music, being an outside, and living in poverty.

[adrian.gaytan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Young Native American boy from the Northeast of the Tuscarora tries to balance life with his own culture, family, school and white society. Lewis is skinny smart kid that lives on a reservation and attends public school. He lives at home with his uncle and mother and copes with having to struggle making friends until he meets George. George is from a military family by the nearby Air force base. Both become friends and share experiences with each others family dynamics. Lewis faces constant bullying and stigma during the 70's decade.
He and George bond with their appreciation of music (Beatles). Their friendship is tested and withstands criticism and nonacceptance.
Topics great for discussion: loyalty, friendship, racism, bullying, advocacy, language, second language learning, military family, reservation, boarding school, violence, myth, poverty, gossip, peer pressure.

[acargile-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A realistic fiction novel, If I Ever Get Out of Here, tells about an Indian who doesn’t see a way off the reservation until he meets a white friend who isn’t prejudice. Set in the 1975-1976 school year, this novel shows how to very different boys can be friends despite society believing that’s it’s unattainable and foolish.

Lewis Blake lives just inside the US border in New York state on an Indian reservation in a house that is barely standing. He cuts his hair so that he’ll look less like an Indian to start the new school year. Nothing changes. No one talks to him; in fact, the kids at school tell the new kid, George, to stay away the Indian because Indians are trouble.

The divisions are very realistic. The military kids are segregated to one area of town, the Indians to the rez, and the white kids to their area. They aren’t supposed to mix, but George makes his own decisions and they bond over music. They love Paul McCartney and his band Wings as well as the older Beatles stuff. George is part of a military family and invites Lewis home to hear his records and meet his family. George’s dad talked about growing up on an Indian reservation as a child and George is curious because it made such an impact on his father. His father also wants to meet Lewis to rekindle his interest and care for Indians. George’s father is strict, so it surprises George when he loans a record to Lewis and takes them to a Paul McCartney concert in Toronto. Lewis sees how life can be, whereas he had never considered any life other than the reservation even though he is smart and has all of his classes with the smart kids.

Music is the outline of the novel with the story filling in the muscles and spirit. If you are a Beatles or Paul McCartney fan, I think you’ll get more out of the novel. I don’t know any of the music, so I think I missed a lot of allusions. This is a really good, engaging novel with a realistic yet a little unrealistic ending. If you liked The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, you’ll like this as well. I actually think this novel is better. It’s about friendship, prejudice, fairness, unfairness, and change.

[tahleen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Set in the mid- to late 1970s in upstate New York, Lewis tells his story about growing up on the Tuscarora Reservation, going to a mostly white school, and trying to balance out two worlds in a place where loyalties are expected on one side or another. Things change for Lewis when, in an attempt to fit in, he cuts off his braid but unfortunately it happens in the wrong way, without being prepared first so he can save it. Then he meets George, a kid on the army base who decides he actually wants to be his friend.

Full review to come.

[debbie_reese-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Outstanding! Gansworth has written several award winning books for the adult market. IF I EVER GET OUT OF HERE is his first book for the youth market. You know the mirror/window metaphor commonly used about multicultural literature? That a book can provide a reader of color with a mirror while also providing a window that someone who is not of that particular group can look into and see what that experience is like? Well... Gansworth offers more than a window. It is a door he's thrown wide open using the Beatles. Readers are invited inside a Native home and community. You'll come to know and love Lewis, the 7th grader at the heart of Gansworth's story as he makes his way through life. You'll see past the material poverty of his home life, to the depths of love in that home and community.