Overview
On a Sioux reservation in North Dakota potent forces converge today, as they have for centuries. Ancestral ghosts make their presence known among the living. Dreams inspire journeys, both literal and physical. The dying are summoned to a council fire "five steps beyond the edge of the universe." And, through it all, good medicine and bad magic nudge the intricate twists of fate.
Such is the setting for Susan Power's debut novel, The Grass Dancer, itself a remarkable journey through many times and many realms. Power, an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, has created a spellbinding collection of interwoven tales that not only illuminate the hearts, minds, and spirits of an unforgettable cast of characters but also offer startling insights into the use and abuse of power.
In the first contemporary scene of The Grass Dancer a young man's life is struck by tragedy for the second time. Harley Wind Soldier, whose father and older brother were killed in a car accident four weeks before his birth, meets Pumpkin, an unusual and irresistible young woman, at an inter-tribal powwow. After astonishing the crowd with her command of the ritual "grass dance," Pumpkin spends the night with Harley, and both discover she is the one who can light the empty corners of his soul. But the next day, Pumpkin is killed in a car crash. An accident perhaps, or the work of Mercury Thunder - the reservation witch whose granddaughter, Charlene, has also set her sights on Harley.
As the novel unfolds, we learn more of the complex, intertwined histories that ultimately brought this scenario into being. We learn of Harley's family secret and of the true reason his mother, Lydia, relinquished her power of speech when she was widowed. We learn of Charlene's bondage to—and ultimate liberation from—a grandmother who everyone on the reservation rightfully fears. And we learn what awful circumstance could bring a woman such as Mercury Thunder to manipulate her tremendous gift of power for evil ends.
Along the way we encounter many others whose individual stories are threads in this larger tapestry. Jeannette McVay is a teacher at the Indian school who came to study Indian "superstition" and finds herself inextricably bound to the reservation as if by a preternatural tie. Red Dress and Ghost Horse are two formidable spirits whose influence extends across boundaries of death. Harley's grandmother, Margaret Many Wounds, stops on her way to the ancestral council fire to frolic on the moon with the Apollo astronauts.
The Grass Dancer is a cornucopia of legends and legacies, secrets and surprises. As one layer of its tale is peeled away, another is revealed, until we are left with a core of understanding of the hopes, dreams, values, and attitudes that inform people and a culture across the generations. Power is a storyteller whose narratives are so vivid that readers are, time and again, shocked when they realize what they have been told is a fictional tale.
From the lore of her people, the Sioux, Susan Power presents an extraordinary debut novel rich in drama and infused with magic. Set on a North Dakota reservation, this book weaves the stories of the old and the young, broken families, romantic rivals, and men and women in love and at war. Historical Fiction
Synopsis
Inspired by the lore of her Sioux heritage, this critically-acclaimed novel from Susan Power weaves the stories of the old and the young, of broken families, romantic rivals, men and women in love and at war. Revealing the harsh price of unfulfilled longings and the healing power of mystery and hope, The Grass Dancer takes readers on a journey through past and present-in a tale as resonant and haunting as an ancestor's memory, and as promising as a child's dream.
Publishers Weekly
A major talent debuts with this beguiling novel whose characters are Dakota Sioux and their spirit ancestors. Covering some of the same themes as Louise Erdrich but displaying her own distinctive voice and transcendent imagination, Power has produced an authentic portrait of Native American culture and characters who are as resilient and tangible as the grass moving over the Great Plains. In interconnected stories that begin in 1981 and range back to 1864, the residents of a Sioux reservation endure poverty, epidemic illness, injustice and--no less importantly--jealousy, greed, anger and unrequited love. The tales begin and end with Harley Wind Soldier, a 17-year-old whose soul is a ``black, empty hole'' because his mother has not spoken a word since the accident 17 years earlier in which Harley's father and brother died. Eventually we discover the true circumstances surrounding that event and other secrets--of clandestine love affairs, of childrens' paternity--that stretch back several generations but hold a grip on the present. Meanwhile, Harley falls in love with enchanting Pumpkin, an amazingly adept grass dancer whose fate will make readers gasp. Mercury Thunder and her daughter Anna use magic in a sinister way, and tragedy results. Herod Small War, a Yuwipi (interpreter of dreams), tries to bring his community into harmony with the spiritual world. The existence of ghosts in the real world is accepted with calm belief by the characters, who know the old legends and understand that the direction of their lives is determined by their gods and ancestors. Power weaves historical events--the Apollo Moon landing; the 19th-century Great Plains drought--into her narrative, reinforcing the seamless coexistence of the real and the spirit realm. A consummate storyteller whose graceful prose is plangent with lyrical metaphor and sensuous detail, she deftly uses suspense, humor, irony and the gradual revelation of dramatic disclosures to compose a tapestry of human life. Seduced by her humane vision and its convincing depiction, one absorbs the traditions and lore of the Sioux community with a sense of wonder reflecting that with which the characters view the natural world. This is a book that begs to be read at one sitting, and then again. A chapter appeared in The Best American Short Stories 1993. BOMC and QPB selection. (Aug.)