Dalva was published by E.P. Dutton in 1988. Dalva Northridge, forty-five, returns to her family’s Nebraska ranch from Santa Monica. She has two missions: to find the son she gave up for adoption at sixteen (fathered by a half-Sioux man named Duane Stone Horse), and to manage the family’s archive — nineteenth-century journals kept by her great-grandfather, a missionary who witnessed the destruction of the Sioux nation.
The novel alternates between Dalva’s voice and that of Michael, her lover — an academic historian given access to the journals, who is intelligent, alcoholic, sexually obsessed, and comically out of place in rural Nebraska. The contrast between their voices (Dalva’s is controlled, lyrical, deeply rooted in landscape; Michael’s is ironic, urban, self-mocking) provides both comedy and structural tension.
Harrison’s achievement is to write a novel that operates simultaneously as personal quest (Dalva’s search for her son), as historical reckoning (the journals documenting genocide), and as love letter to the Nebraska landscape (rendered with Harrison’s characteristic sensory precision). The family history spans the entire American experience from frontier settlement through contemporary ranching, and the Sioux destruction documented in the journals provides a moral weight that prevents the personal story from becoming merely private.
Collecting Dalva
First edition (E.P. Dutton, New York, 1988): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $50–$125
- Very good: $20–$50
- Signed: $100–$200
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation. Harrison’s most praised novel.
Nebraska Epic
Dalva (1988) is Harrison’s most ambitious novel — narrated partly by Dalva, a woman returning to her family’s Nebraska ranch, and partly by Michael, a dissipated academic studying the family’s nineteenth-century journals. The novel spans 150 years of American history through the Northridge family’s relationship with the Lakota Sioux, and Dalva herself is Harrison’s most fully realized female character. Critics who had dismissed Harrison as a macho adventure writer were forced to reconsider. The novel was a bestseller and marked Harrison’s transition from cult writer to major American novelist.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Harrison write women? Dalva is the strongest evidence that he could. The character’s intelligence, emotional depth, and autonomy surprised readers who expected only testosterone-fueled prose from Harrison.