The Painted Drum

“This is where we live, my mother and I, just where the road begins to tangle.”

Faye narrates Part 1, and in this opening chapter, she ponders the road where she lives–Revival Road–and equates its twisting, tangled course with the path of life. Throughout the novel, roads represent the order the dominant white culture imposes on the wild landscape and those who originally inhabited it. By noting that they live at the spot between order and intricacy, Faye symbolically positions them between the white and Indigenous American cultures.

“Still, I try to at least record connections.”

Referring to the confusing path of her road and of the lives lived there, Faye identifies herself as an observer trying to establish and record stabilizing connections. Connections between people as a source of healing and growth is an important theme in the novel, but here, Faye implies she is outside the community looking in. Because she resists making connections with others, Faye is isolated with the pain of her past.

“Formerly much celebrated for his work in assemblages of stone, he has fallen into what he calls the Zwischenraum, the space between things.”

Kurt Krahe, Faye’s German lover, was once famous for his art pieces, but hasn’t produced anything of note for years. In many ways, he represents the European culture that spread across North America centuries ago, imposing its values of orderliness, individualism, and wealth. For Kurt, falling in between is a