Roofwalker

In a collection by the author of The Grass Dancer, a Sioux spirit travels the night sky in search of good dreams that are rendered true when he consumes them, from a Sioux elder's hope to return to her prairie home to a Harvard student's reevaluation of the learning process.

Roofwalker, made up of a unique combination of fiction and nonfiction, or "stories" and "histories," reveals the ways that native traditions and beliefs work in the lives of characters who live far from the reservation—and in the author’s own life. Many of the "histories" repeat subjects and themes found in the "stories," making Roofwalker a book in which spirits and the living commingle and Sioux culture and modern life collide with disarming power, humor, and joy.

The first seven pieces in the book are "stories," fictional accounts primarily of girls and women. In the title story, a young girl believes in the power of the "roofwalker" spirit to make her dreams come true. In "Beaded Souls," a woman is cursed by the sin of her great-grandfather, an Indian policeman who arrested Sitting Bull. "First Fruits" follows a native girl’s first-year at Harvard.

The nonfiction pieces include Power’s imaginary account of the meeting of her Phi Beta Kappa father and Sioux mother, a piece about the letters of an Irish ancestor and another in which Power and her mother visit the Field Museum in Chicago, where a native ancestor’s dress is on display.

Power continues to explore her Native American heritage in this short story collection, a poignant, evocative follow-up to her PEN/Hemingway Award-winning first book, The Grass Dancer. Many of the stories have dual settings involving Sioux protagonists who have emigrated from North Dakota to Chicago, starting with the title story, which tells of a young girl's longings for her father after he abandons her mother and the girl's two siblings. Family ties are another connecting thread: "Watermelon Seeds" is a familiar story about a 16-year-old girl who tries to battle her mother's disapproval after her older boyfriend gets her pregnant; "Beaded Soles" is a taut, unusual tale in which a woman murders her husband after a difficult relocation to Chicago and a miscarriage. Power effectively uses vivid, colorful Native American imagery and myths in the longer stories, but several of the shorter entries are fragmented and shakier-"The Attic" is an ordinary account of some intriguing heirlooms that a woman finds among her family's artifacts, while "Chicago Waters" is a better, more complex series of musings about the perils and potential of swimming in Lake Michigan. The author displays a greater sense of narrative command here than in her debut, which allows her to take risks with her conceits and story lines. Occasionally she veers toward cliches of Native American fiction, but her confident voice marks her as a writer with potential.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.