From the River's Edge

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A trial concerning stolen cattle becomes the foil to the tragic relationship between Native Americans and later arrivals in Cook-Lynn's ( The Power of Horses ) spare, poignant novel. Soon after agreeing to press charges against a young white man for the theft, Sioux John Tatekeya finds himself and his tribe, the Dakotahs, on trial. Along with other South Dakota reservations dwellers, Tatekeya has been forced to relocate in order to make way for a new dam. Accordingly, the trial seems a sad continuation of the Dakotahs' troubled history. But when a relative testifies against him, Tatekeya feels that a line has been crossed: colonialism has finally cost his people their essential value, responsibility to family. Woven throughout the courtroom proceedings are the mournful recollections of Tatekeya and his lover, Aurelia. Beautifully fusing the Northern Plains setting with her plot, Cook-Lynn establishes a larger significance for the trial and, despite occasional lapses in narrative momentum--telling rather than showing salient developments--places the sorrows and frustrations of Native Americans in stark relief. (July)

Library Journal

Like the dead trees which protrude from the white people's reservoir covering tribal land, John Tatekeya and other Dakota Sioux discover that, in 1967, their Indian roots are dying from modern society's en croachment. John wins a court case against a white man who rustled his cattle but is left uncompensated by the court and betrayed by Indians corrupted by the white world. Basing her story on an actual trial, Cook-Lynn has written an intro spective appeal for Indians to retain their culture. While the book is a snapshot of that particular period, its characterization is less one-dimensional than such novels of the 19th-century Sioux, most notably Ruth Beebe Hill's Hanta Yo ( LJ 1/15/79) and Ella Cara Deloria's Waterlilly ( LJ 6/1/ 88)--and the film Dances with Wolves . But the theme of harmony between Indians and nature is common to all. Recommended for libraries collecting fiction on Native Americans.-- Robert Jordan, Univ. of Iowa, Iowa City