Desert Hawk Books

Dark River
A Novel

Louis Owens

 

296  pages
23 B&W Illustrations
5.5" x 8.5"
Hardcover

Quantity:  $24.95 & S/H  

 

     Jacob Nashoba's journey has taken him from his Choctaw homeland in Mississippi to Vietnam and finally to a small reservation in the mountains of eastern Arizona. A tribal ranger, he lives among people far different from any he has known. Balanced precariously between isolation and community, he is drawn to both the fastness of a remote river canyon and the Apaches who have come to be the only family he has.
     Nashoba's world is peopled by, among others, a bright young man who sells vision quests to romantic tourists, a determined elder whose power makes her a force to be reckoned with on the reservation, a resident anthropologist more "native" than the natives, a corrupt tribal chairman, a former Hollywood extra who shouts at reservation women the scraps of Italian he learned from other "Indian" actors, and the ranger's estranged wife. Confusion and violence follow their encounter with a right-wing militia group training secretly on tribal land. The contrast between these Rambo types and the various Native American characters typifies the sardonic humor running throughout this novel of contemporary Indian identity.
     Dark River contains unexpected bends and eddies and often twists around on itself in startling fashion, leading the reader into unfamiliar literary terrain.

Louis Owens, who is of Choctaw-Cherokee-Irish descent, is Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of New Mexico. His works include Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel and Mixedblood Messages: Literature, Film, Family, Place, and the novels The Sharpest Sight, Bone Game, and Wolfsong.