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Summary
Summary
Michael Dorris has crafted a fierce saga of three generations of Native American women, beset by hardships and torn by angry secrets, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of kinship. Starting in the present day and moving backward, the novel is told in the voices of the three women: fifteen-year-old part-Black Rayona; her American Indian mother, Christine, consumed by tenderness and resentment toward those she loves; and the fierce and mysterious Ida, mother and grandmother whose haunting secrets, betrayals, and dreams echo through the years, braiding together the strands of the shared past.
Author Notes
Michael Dorris, Author Michael Dorris received an undergraduate degree in English, with honors, from Georgetown University and a graduate degree in anthropology from Yale. He taught for fifteen years at Dartmouth College and founded the Native American Studies Program there.
His novels include "A Yellow Raft in Blue Water" and "The Crown of Columbus," co-authored with Louise Erdrich. "The Broken Cord," which was named Best Non-Fiction of the Year by the National Book Critics Circle, brought attention to the disorder Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. He has also written novels for young adults, which include "Guests," "Sees Behind Trees," and "Morning Girl," which won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This spare generational novel presents Rayona, Christine and ``Aunt'' Ida, Native American mothers and daughters bonded by blood and secrets. PW found that this masterful debut, by a Dartmouth professor of Native American studies and the husband-collaborator of Louise Erdrich, ``glows with compassion and integrity.'' (April) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
In a tale of three generations, 15-year-old half-Indian Rayona longs for a cozy suburban family, but her mother abandons Rayona on the barren Montana reservation with her fierce grandmother who doesn't know her and doesn't want to. (Mr 1 87 Upfront)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Michael Dorris's first novel (Turtleback, 1987) comes to life in this fully voiced reading by Barbara Rosenblat. At 15, Rayona is left by her Native-American mother shortly after her African-American father walks out of their lives again, and this time probably forever. Rayona tries to tolerate life with her grandmother, known by all as Aunt Ida, but when the mission priest sexually harasses this tough but insightful young woman, she leaves the reservation and finds her way into a new life in a Montana state park. After a few weeks' idyll as a maintenance worker sheltered by former hippies, Rayona returns to her mother, Christine. The narrative switches to become an account of how Christine came to be the person Rayona has known. Aunt Ida raised Christine on the reservation, along with Christine's younger brother Lee. Lee's best friend, Dayton, plays a significant role in Christine's life right through the time of Rayona's return years later, but Lee dies as a youth in Vietnam. In the novel's final movement, Aunt Ida's brief but substantial story unfolds: Christine, it turns out, is her daughter only by secret adoption, an act with lifelong consequences undertaken to rescue another woman, Clara, from the shame of bearing the baby of Ida's father while he was married to Ida's mother. Rosenblat gives each of these women-ranging in age from youth through old age-a strength of voice that matches their strengths of character. The symbol of the philandering priest is unfortunately resonant now, but the novel's highly developed iconography of color and elemental forces continues to stand as a literature teacher's friend. Dorris' work lends itself particularly well to oral delivery, and this production is stellar.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Three American Indian women stand in the focused light of this first novel, and turmoil is their portion. First introduced is teen-aged Rayona, whose mother Christine is dying of too much drinking and high living; Rayona is more or less dropped by the wayside to fend for herself around the environs of Seattle and the Montana reservation of her birth. She is plucky (she enters an amateur rodeo as a boy) but stunned, searching for a stability of affection she never quite finds. With her mother Christine, it's been another story: affection came to her almost too much, and, nearly buried beneath it, she self-destructs, in her illness finally returning to the reservation to be cared for by her brother Lee (until his death) and her mother Aunt Ida. Mother Aunt Ida? The last part of the book--and the best--tells the story of how a young Indian girl, Ida, assumed (through coercion) the child born of an aunt (who'd come to nurse her sister through illness and stayed to bear her brother-in-law's child: Christine). It's only here that Dorris' narrative decision--to telescope the story, un. fold family secrets but backwards--bears fruit; a reader in the meantime has had to absorb a lot of hints and feints about relationships never truly clear. Much serrated detail (some not very original, some striking) but no binder--and ultimately a book weakened by its postponement, just a bit too coy. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
A powerful novel of three generations of American Indian women, each seeking her own identity while forever cognizant of family responsibilities, loyalty, and love. Rayona, half-Indian half-black daughter of Christine, reacts to feelings of rejection and abandonment by running away, not knowing that her mother had acted in a similar fashion some 15 years before. But family ties draw Rayona hometo the Montana reservationas they drew Christine, and as they had drawn Ida many years earlier. As the three recount their lives, often repeating incidents but adding new perspectives, a total picture emerges. The result is a beautifully passionate first novel reminiscent of Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine and The Beet Queen , but a strong work which should be read and enjoyed for its own merits. Highly recommended. Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
