Monday, December 27, 2010

Book: The Last Ghost Dancer by Tony Bender

The cover of this library book seduced me: A narrow road with mountains in the distance and fence-lined fields on either side. A dark-haired boy in jeans and a loose white shirt is running towards the mountains.

The book is set in a small western Dakota town. The characters are a wise Indian named Joe Big Cloud, a group of friends who spend their last summer together, still relatively carefree kids before entering the adult worlds of more responsibility, a neighborhood evil person, and the townspeople and families and shopkeepers who live in Pale Butte. This is a short novel but is a story with a beginning and an end, satisfying and somewhat bittersweet. It is a vignette...a snapshot of a summer under the wide western skies in the late 20th century. It can be read in an evening and informs and colors one of the thousands of places in our country where history, sociology and geography mesh and make a story unique to time and place.

While Joe Big Cloud is part of the book, his isn't really the story that the title suggests.

Also, the cover was a promise that didn't happen, but I still liked it....

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