South Dakota Books

after the death of a new born early baby Colleen went out to get the widow all was well expet the fact that Colleen's ma was to weak to under stand her baby was dead,she didn't know. So Colleen went out to get the widow and then she saw... You'll find out when read Prairie Whispers. Colleen is a young girl who faces a big challenge ahead of her. She just lied for the first time in her life! This is an exiting good book,sitting there for hours wishing it would never end. I think this is history and action all in one book. You'll here about a snake bite that is deadly a lie comeing from a girl who's never lied in her life a death from a newley born early baby, and a mother who doesn't know! You'll see how it all fits in there when you read Prairie Whispers!

Prairie Whispers is a suspenceful novel all the way through. The begining of the book tells when colleen receives a baby from a woman on her death bed. The woman doesnt want her newborn to have to grow up with an obusive father. along with the newborn baby Colleen gets a strong box with goodies and a golden watch for the baby. while the husband is suspicious of colleen taking his things colleen cant even tell her parents or brother what really happend or she could get in real trouble. The most suspenseful part of this novel is when the man takes the baby away from colleen and threatens not to give the baby back unless he gets the money, for he has no need of the baby. Colleen learns that she needs to tell her parents everything and they will take care of it and also dont steal! Colleen also has many other adventures in this book that are also exiting. Colleen knows there will be nothing like this experience of her lifetime.

I am a 8th grade English teacher. I saw the review for this novel in The Horn Book. It was excellent! The plot is straight forward and the tension in the story does not let up until the last page. It is a good book to develop questions and ethical debates with your students. "What would you do" will be in your head as you read the entire book. Questions as to Clay O'Brien's true character will also come up. You also have to decide if Mary Kathleen O'Brien description of her husband is accurate. It is a good "thinking book. The book is a quick read with only 184 pages. The print is medium size as well. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical fiction with a bit of suspense thrown in!

Ella Deloria's classic 1932 collection has been reprinted fully by the University of Nebraska Press (ISBN 080326660X) and partially by the University of South Dakota Press (ISBN 0882490257). Both editions include all the tales collected by Deloria, and give her polished English translations, her cultural notes and her introduction. The Nebraska edition includes all this plus the Lakhota language originals and Deloria's literal word-by-word translations. Those interested in the ethnological and story-telling aspects of the tales will find either edition to be a masterly rendition into English by one of the first native American anthropologists of her native literature. Those interested in the linguistic aspects of the Lakhota/Dakota language should get the Nebraska edition. (Since Amazon's computers apply the same rating and review to both editions, I have removed one star for the Dakota Press version.)

If you are interested in Siouan languages, this and Deloria's
Dakota grammar are the books to get - and modern materials published
by the Lakota Language Consortium.

This book describes the life of a hoop dancer for the Lakota. I found it very informative and pleasant to read. You get a real flavor for a person who has chosen to try to maintain the culture of his people. It's not easy.

Lakota Hoop Dancer not only explains about the dancing and dancer, but gives a feel for the land of the Lakota, their views of the world, and the people themselves and their values. The brief glossary and explanations of Lakota expressions within the book help. Students and others interested in American Indian tribes will enjoy this and gain insights. Excellent photographs enhance the text.

Tom Lewis spent ~ 10 years at Pine Ridge, working as a psychiatrist in the local hospital. During that time he had the opportunity to interact with many prominent Lakota healers, including Frank Fools Crow, the most eminent of them all at that time. In this book he presents us with a sympathetic account of his encounters with yuwipi men, Eagle ceremony leaders, herbalists and other medicine people; he also includes interviews with white and Indian informers and his own observations of the life on the rez. He tries to be nice, but many details are quite scathing; the books describes graphically the Lakota disregard for their own environment, health and traditions; the drunken brawls, the dysfunctional family life, the distrust of the white man. The high rate of medical problems among the Oglala is associated with poverty, education difficulties, family disorganization, a disintegrating culture, the absence of an economic base, and pervasive difficulties with role, status and motivation.

The weakest point of the book is that Lewis never bothered to actually learn about Lakota healing; the book is written from a Westerner's "rational" perspective, taking no account of the reality of the indigenous view of the world and its mysteries. "Why", asks Lewis, do these people "rely on the imagery of the unreal, the mysteries of mythological formations, the magical techniques"? His answer is that the modern Lakota healer acts basically as a psychotherapist, reassuring his clients and weaving them back into the web of mutual social obligations. In my opinion, and experience, Lewis' contrast between the "magical thought" of the healers he encountered and the "scientific thought" he ascribes to himself look nowadays a bit naive and passe. They certainly do not reflect modern anthropology or psychiatry. Rather, they represent a white amateur's view of the fascinating world where people are still connected to nature and its whispers, where ancestors and spirits still have a stake in our survival, where conversation and listening become one and the same.

Lewis a psychiatrist and medical anthropologist who stayed at the Pine Ridge Res in the late 60's and early 70's. From the book: "...he describes the Indian Healers - their techniques, personal histories and qualities, the problems addressed and the results obtained" . This is an excellent book for Native American studies, those interested in non AMA healing techniques and also should be required reading for all med students.

Latza's "An Alphabetical Scrapbook" is a beautiful piece of work! A great addition for any parent (or child!) from South Dakota. Terrific photographs, educational themes, great layout, and affordable!

This book is on our gift list for children whose parents have moved from the upper midwestern scenery. The South Dakota photography accompanied by the short prose is a reminder of the reasons we choose to remain here. We are sorry we have nothing for an X, but the harvest photograph almost smells like August on the farm.

Oh dear! Nice idea; distinctly average execution. The obvious faults with this effort have been mentioned elsewhere so I won't labour these. The clunky narrative device, too, has also been given a good `going over' so again, I'll refrain from sticking the boot in here. It's okay for a holiday read if nothing else is available; let's put it this way, if I had lost the book half way through it would not have bothered me.

Deaver writes first-rate thrillers featuring a compelling hero in Lincoln Rhyme but, in common with some of his contempories, I suppose he cannot help wondering if his success depends solely on this, his main and most popular character. Michael Connelly had one superb deviation from the `straight and narrow' Bosch series with The Poet but, in contrast, Chasing the Dime might just as well have been entitled Chasing the Dire! Similarly Deaver has failed to achieve even a modicum above the very ordinary with this lame effort that attempts to cover the same ground as Philip Kerr's brilliant Berlin Noir.

No spoilers

I'm a big Deaver and have thoroughly enjoyed every book I've ever read by him. I read this book after finishing the Lincoln Rhyme series because those books have been among my favorite reads of the genre in recent memory. I've read a few of Deaver's other stand-alone books and enjoyed them so I figured this one would be just as good.

While this book was enjoyable and I got into in enough to finish it as quickly as usual, it wasn't as great of a novel as any in the Rhyme series or his other stand-alones (like Blue Nowhere, which is great). Basically, the best advice is that if you like Deaver's other stuff and want something else to read by him, then you'll enjoy this book just enough to make it a worthwhile read. However, if you're new to Deaver, go for the gold and read, in order, the Lincoln Rhyme series.

Paul Schumann, an American hit man, is given a choice: face Tom Dewey or face the Nazis. Not surprisingly (since it would be a boring book otherwise) he chooses to undertake a clandestine mission to assassinate Reinhart Ernst, a high ranking Nazi official in charge of rearmament.

Along the way his cover is compromised, and he is tracked not only the Gestapo, but the German police.

Without going into great detail on the plot points, suffice it to say that there are a number of twists and turns in the plot, and most of the canidates are multi-dimensional. The Nazis have their good points and the "good guys" have their bad points.

When reading this book, I kept wondering -- would Paul go through with his mission and what would happen to the characters along the way -- not just the main characters, but the supporting roles.

Also I'll admit that the ending wasn't what I expected.

Well worth a read.

Garden of Beasts by Jeffery Deaver is a book full of surprises. Everybody has two sides in this one, who they are and who they were and in pre WWII Germany, it matters. The world is changing and bit by bit the characters have to decide how far they will stretch their conscience to support their countries. While they all are trying to figure it out the body count is mounting. Behind the fast paced mystery Deaver also tells the story of the German people who were not Jewish, but none the less were caught up in the nightmare that was one man's ugly dream of utopia. Besides being entertaining this book will remind you that we all have boundaries that define who we are and what we stand for.

Garden of Beasts is a historical novel by Jeffrey Deaver. Deaver is popular for his Lincoln Rhyme novels, but for this book he focuses on 1936 Germany as the Olympics are about the begin and Germany is making preparations to become a global menace. Paul Schumann is a "button man", a hit man for the mob who finally gets caught. The people that catch him work for the government and promise him his freedome if he will go overseas to Germany and kill a man named Reinhard Ernst. Ernst is Hitler's right hand man in charge of rearming the German army. Ernst's genius lies not only in rearming the country, but in hiding it from the Western allies.

Schumann is given a cover as a sports journalist and travels to Germany. Once there, he is in immediate danger as he is acosted by an undercover German officer. His contact saves him, but in the process kills the German. Willi Kohl is the police investigator that is in charge of finding out who killed the unknown man in the alley. From the beginning of the book, Kohl is right on the tale of Schumann, and the chase is on. Schumann speaks excellent German and fits right in. However, he makes a few mistakes and is saved by Otto Webber, a scam artist that can help Schumann get anything he wants.

Will Schumann succeed in killing Ernst? Read the novel and find out. If you do read, you will get to enjoy some fascinating characters along the way. Willi Kohl is an older man, proud of his profession and mistrusting of the Nazis. Kohl is afraid of losing his kids to the intoxicating power of the Hitler Youth. Ernst is portrayed as a kindly grandfather who spends tons of time with his grandson. Ernst wants only what is best for Germany, and thinks that soon HItler will be out of power. This is a book that sneaks up on you. I read where Deaver wrote about an all encompassing evil when writing this book. The evil is truly there when you her about the persecution of the Jews and other minorities. There is even a greater evil present that personifies how a country full of civilizied people can so quickly turn to barbaric methods to achieve their goals. The presence of this evil becomes apparent at the climax of this novel and makes what came before it that much more chilling.

I've always enjoyed novels centered around World War II and fans of the genre should enjoy this book as well. I've only read one Lincoln Rhyme novel, and didn't like it that much. I may give Deaver another try since I really liked Garden of Beasts. It is an inriguing, haunting historical thriller.

This book the first four years is about a young couple who doesn't agree on being framers for a living. So they make a deal. The deal was that they would try out being farmers for 3 years then after the 3 years they would deside if they liked being a framer family. If they didn't like being framers then they would start a new life with a new job. If they did like being framers they would stick to it and be a happy family. The family goes through alot of trouble and they get a new member to the family. I would recomend the book to children AND adults.

Hesitant at tying her future to a farmer, Wilder agrees to allow her new husband three years to try. If he proves he can make them a decent living, she will consider their staying in that lifestyle.

Thus this story of Wilder's early married years is born. In the first four years (for she allows Manly an extra to the original three) the couple sees weather disasters, serious illness, the birth of their daughter Rose, and a staggering amount of physical labor.

Despite the difficulties, the Wilders persevere, bound by their love for one another and their determination to succeed.

While an overall enjoyable book, and a nice conclusion to the stories of Laura's childhood and coming-of-age presented in the previous books, "The First Four Years" almost felt as if it were written by another person, about other people than those with whom the reader became familiar prior. Perhaps it's only because the protagonist was considerably younger in the initial stories, but here it felt like more of a chronology, a documentation of facts with a few hastily scrawled characterizations to turn it into a novel, than anything else.

"The First Four Years," is a story about the early years of the marriage of Laura Ingalls and Manly Wilder.As the story starts in 1894, Laura agrees to marry Manly and help him try to make a living farming.The young family eventually grows with the birth of baby Rose.

The Wilder family faces many trials thoughout there lives. sickness, the harsh climate, and more. Wilder presents the often deadly dangers of pioneer life quite often.

There are some dark and harsh moments along the way, but I found this book to be joyful and hopeful. Wilder shows courage of the pioneer farm family.

I had read the Little House series a number of times over the years, but never picked up the First Four Years. Finally, as an adult - and even more a fan of Laura than I was young - I picked up this book to see what happened AFTER "happily ever after."

Well, I frankly wish I hadn't. Perhaps it's better to have the truth than to buy into the sugar-coating, but it truly disappointed me in a number of ways. Most other reviewers here have complained about the miserable story line - and it IS pretty depressing - but that's not even what bothered me the most. The Laura I had come to know through the first books was a good-hearted person who loved her family more than anything. It bothered me terribly that they were hardly mentioned (some of them, not at all!) throughout the entire book. The names permeating the book are mainly her own, Rose's and "Manly's."

... and she's not even all that cuddly in regards to her husband. As others have pointed out, she intially refused to marry him because he was "just a farmer." Ouch. Did she hate her childhood that much? The Laura in this book does indeed come off as a cold and somewhat naggy woman, nothing like the sassy, charming, good-hearted Laura of old. And not only does she seem to forsake her family of origin - the main characters in all of her other books! - but she destroys secondary characters that I used to like. I'll never be able to read about Mr. and Mrs. Boast again without thinking that they're a little bit icky. Which really stinks. At least Mr. Edwards didn't show up and molest Rose or anything.

Reading this really made me wonder about the degree to which Rose took a hand in the original Little House books. It's quite clear, reading this, that it is of a much lower quality and in a very different voice than the rest of the books. In defense of Laura, I can only posit that this is because these were actually notes and would have been seriously revised before being published as a "Little House" book. But with MacBride - the author of the Prologue and the one holding the "Little House" rights - having been so close to Rose, it might well be that he allowed the book to be released untouched on purpose, to show the world what the rest of the series would have been like stripped of his mentor's editing and re-writing touch-ups. To do her honor, so to speak, since she has claimed none on the rest of the series. Most telling is the contrast between Laura's version of her wedding in these notes and the version published in "Golden Years:" why did these need to be re-published? The story could have easily been begun where the last book left off. It almost seems as though it were left in as a study in contrast, meant to tip the readers off to something about the difference in writing styles and quality.

All-in-all, if you want to learn more about praries and how much things cost in the late 1800s, by all means - pick this up. If you want to preserve your memories of how much Laura loved her Pa and Ma and her sister Mary, and of what a fiesty but caring young lady she was, I recommend skipping this. Maybe preferring the fictionalized world to reality isn't very mature, but there it is.

I think I'm going to go watch a few episodes of the 70s TV series to cheer myself up, as long as I seem to enjoy fiction so much.

This was the only book in the Little House series I hadn't read yet (shut up, I AM from Kansas), mostly because I'd always heard it wasn't really a Little House book at all, just Laura Ingalls Wilder's journal of her first four years of marriage on the prairie. It is quite different in tone from the other books in the Little House series, even with an alternate wedding that's not nearly as romanticized as the one in These Happy Golden Years. Also, the chapters aren't divided by a quaint episode or schoolhouse observance like the previous eight books but simply by each of the first four years, reinforcing the journal-like tone. But the biggest surprise of the book is how obnoxious Laura has become. She initially denies Almanzo marriage because she doesn't want to marry a farmer and wants to live in the town with a merchant because they make all the money; then, after she gives in to his persistent promises that he'll make good, she continually nags her husband about the money they're not making. Plenty bad happens to them just like it did to her family when she was growing up, but now instead of a wide-eyed optimistic child, she's become a world-weary child-bride. Perhaps this is a more realistic view of Laura Ingalls Wilder than the previous books; if so, I'll take the romance.

Power certainly does not make this an easy read. At first glance you can read through it and be happy, then you start really reading it, and it never ends! There are so many messages in this book than I care to count, and our class disected this book till I wanted to puke. However, in defence of Power, it was well written and if I had read on my own, not only would my knowledge of Native American life been increased dramatically, I would have enjoyed it!

I have also met Power, very nice woman, and she can most certainly tell a story.

Sometimes the best intentions at innovative approaches result in something akin to torture. I suspect that Susan Power was envisioning a novel approach to the NA Novel genre. Instead, she sold herself short - and her readers along with her. It was expertly crafted short stories disconnectedly telling differing tales of the same connected story lines, some without resolution and some surprisingly with. Obvious talent such as this should not have as its supreme result a book so unworthy of representing the author. Let us pray she fixes these flaws and continues to hone her amazing story telling gift.

The editorial and other customer reviews do a good job of covering the characters and basic plot, so I won't go into that.

This has to be the best book I've read in months. It's practically lyrical, the sentences are so pretty. The dust jacket is more than a little off on the plot, so don't read that. It's a collection of self contained stories about a messed up family living on a reservation in North Dakota.

Each story is narrated by a different person and takes place a random number of years before the last one. The effect is that each new chapter gives you a different understanding of the events in the previous chapters, until you get back to the "present" time from the first chapter, where you have a completely new take on everyone involved.

It's unusual to find a short story collection this good from such a new author. I highly recommend it.

This is an interesting book that gives us a series of stories about Sioux spirituality. The stories are loosely interconnected with each other and tell of people who maintain an ability to employ a sort of black magic. With this "gift" they communicate with past generations, conjure up love potions, compel others to self destruction, and other bizarre phenomena. Within these stories is a generally clear view of life in a modern day Indian reservation. The author, an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation who grew up in Chicago, gives an inside view of a live fairly removed from mainstream America. I got the feeling that there was a fair amount of autobiographical material included in these stories.

I was prepared to give this book a "3 Star" rating until I noticed how well the author pulled things together towards the end. I had made the mistake of reading the book one story at a time spaced in between my other reading. I finished the last third of the book in a day's time and was able to catch the inter-relationships of the stories. Still, I was not as drawn into the spiritual magic as others may be. I don't discredit this phenomena but I suspect there are others who will get more out of the book than I did. I did enjoy a lot of the local flavor. I don't ever recall seeing any other novel that mentioned my wife's hometown of Mandaree, North Dakota. I have come to appreciate that there is a real element of spiritual magic through her Hidatsa/Mandan roots. Of the many stories and incidents that she has shared with me, I do vividly recall the night after her mother's funeral. My wife expressed her aprehension about going to bed that night because she was sure her mother's spirit would come to visit. That night, about 2AM, our house dog started barking. He never barks indoors at night and, when I got up to look around, nothing explained his outburst. I was puzzled, my wife wasn't. Susan Powers shares a lot of this in "The Grass Dancer" but on a much larger scale.

Susan Power's THE GRASS DANCER, although billed as a novel, is a series of tightly bound stories centered around the thematic core of a Sioux myth. Separately, these stories, many of which have been previously published in high-quality magazines such as The Atlantic and The Paris Review, are excellent, but read as a whole, one after the other, they form a powerful whole - a novel, if you will. The world Ms. Power creates it at once current and ancient, with legends and tales of ancestors so entwined with the present day that the Native American characters seem less like individuals and more like highlighted segments on a multi-branched and infinitely continuing time line. But that is not to say that Ms. Power creates simple characters. Her people are complex and often troubled, struggling with the magic that swirls around them.

The individual stories tell the larger one of Native Americans, in particular the Sioux, and their battles, both physical and metaphysical, with the white men who invaded their land. This is not a historical novel, however, but rather a lyrically psychological one, where myth becomes fact. The pivotal legend that embraces all the characters in The Grass Dancer is the one of Red Dress, a Sioux woman with breath the scent of plums and a spirit that guides a long line of women to their destinies, both tragic and exhilarating. Charlene, a direct descendent from Red Dress, is in love with Harley, a descendent of Red Dress's husband Ghost Horse. But Harley keeps in his heart the spirit of another woman. Charlene's grandmother, Mercury, uses Red Dress's magic to control men and to wrest Charlene from her mother. Lydia, who is mute by choice, survives her husband and son, dead because of her anger with the magic of Red Dress. The magic in this novel has such force that when Red Dress finally tells her own story, we cannot wait to see what kind of mortal she was that gave rise to such spiritual power. Sadly, the Red Dress story is the weakest of the book. Her motivation to lure white men to their deaths, ultimately bringing on her own, seems flimsy. However, Red Dress as a spirit has become so poignant through the other stories that her final appearance in the novel is perhaps one of the most moving passages.

Susan Power is an extraordinarily gifted writer with a taste for language that makes a reader want to linger over her words. Her imagination is so precise that it is difficult to accept that her characters do not exist beyond the pages.

Tom Brokaw must think that people care about every facet of his dull life--because he has elaborated on it in so much boring detail in this book that even Brokaw fans will throw their hands up after hearing another insignificant story and say "who cares."

Sadly, he comes across as a person who considered himself better than others and was incredibly insensitive when it came to class status. He often mentions in the book whether someone is "working class" and he claims that in high school "I was a member of the ruling class...it was a white man's and white boy's world" and writes about racism issues that deal with his going to school with Native Americans. If he thinks he is getting sympathy from the reader because he somehow grew beyond his bigotry it is hard to come to that conclusion through this book.

Brokaw is trying to build on his past "Greatest Generation" reputation by painting a picture of his childhood on the South Dakota prairie. But the problem is that it was a pretty boring childhood. Camp, summer jobs, trips to Minneapolis, fitting in at school--almost nothing happened to him that was anything unusual.

There are two exceptions that are worth hearing about. First, as a teenager he headed to New York City to appear on a game show with the South Dakota governor and ended up cheating on the show. Yes, he was part of the quiz shows scandals. This is something he probably should not have revealed.

Second, the only good thing about the book is that it tells the story of how this partying college kid was "counseled" to leave school by a caring professor who told him, "Get all the wine, women and song out of your system." Though this should embarrass the future anchorman, his professor used it to turn Brokaw's life around. Tom dropped out of college then begged the professor to let him back in as a serious student.

The book is also deceptive in length. It may look like a long book of over a couple hundred pages, but the types is double spaced and there are about 30 pages of picture-only pages mixed in the middle of chapters, so the actual length of the book would be about 100 pages in a normal book.

After reading this book any favorable opinion people have of Brokaw should decrease because he comes across as a smug, arrogant, rich guy who thinks his lowly upbringing was something special. It wasn't--he was raised the same way most other people were in the Midwest and nothing really changed for him until that college professor gave him a verbal kick in the pants to change his life.

Tom Brokaw has always projected to his viewers a caring, sincere presence
as he outlined the happenings of the day in our nation and around the world. Even if the news he broadcasted was sad or shocking he gave us the feeling that we could get through this together. This book offers the same
warmth and sincerity in describing my similar experiences in growing up
during and after WWII.

Been there and done that. Refreshing read! Stirred up many old memories and recollections.

Brokaw gives a seemingly honest and direct account of his formative years. His respect and admiration for his parents gives him guidelines for a life in the limelight where it may be easy to loose one's footing.

It is interesting to get a glimpse of the life in the heartland of the U. S. in the forties and fifties when so much of my own perception of the U. S. from a Scandinavian viewpoint was formed.

Congratulations to Tom Brokaw for a fine book!

One reviewer called this book "for simpletons by a simpleton." Well, as I have very little respect for today's mainstream media, especially Dan Rather and Katie Couric, Brokaw, though preachy, is better than most. This book is a simple book, but it's also pleasant and does lend insight into his modest upbringing in South Dakota---far different from what the elites usually value.

I read it while I drove cross country, which is probably why I gave it 3 stars, rather than 2, as I appreciated it more.

Brokaw may be biased and pedantic now, but he's no ninnyhammer either. He covered stories with some depth, and was rarely lazy or a liar, like Rather. And he worked hard to get where he was, without modern affirmative action. The stories of Big Sky country and the "tragedies" he observed befalling the "Natives" when he returned were unnecessary and awkward, though.

He's still better than Brian Williams.

London's adolescent fantasy for wannabe AIMsters completely misrepresents the meaning and purpose of sun dance. The true sun dance has always been a ceremony of individual sacrifice for the People and healing of the sick. It has never been about inspiring violent acts with stolen weapons. How curious to find the old white man's paranoia that ceremonies like sun dance and the ghost dance stir up the Indians on the war-path in a book that purports to be sympathetic to the Lakota cause.

Sun Dancer goes beyond simply committing cultural theft of using sacred ceremonies as a back-drop to tell a rather un-inspired story. The family names Mr. London uses for his main characters are part of a spiritual and peace-keeping tradition on Pine Ridge that pre-dates white contact. They are the actual surnames of the traditional Lakota leaders who organized the take-over at Wounded Knee in 1972 to draw national attention to FBI directed disappearances and kidnappings on Pine Ridge Reservation during the COINTELPRO investigations.

Although Mr. London claims to have summered in Wanblee and Kyle while on sabbatical, he never actually talked to the families whose names he used or asked their permission. They do not enjoy being portrayed as alcoholic victims of PSTS motivated by a "complex mix of personal bitterness, ethnic pride, and long-simmering desires for revenge" as your Amazon reviewer so aptly summarized. If you care about injustice against Native Americans, do not buy this book.

This book gives the reader the best of all worlds. You experience the action-filled plot and care about the characters right from the beginning (two brothers, Clem and Joey, just their names are great!) and at the same time are transported to another culture, another place, another time, and given the opportunity to learn about the Sioux Indians' customs and struggles.

Can't wait for London's next book!
p.s. the cover of this book is particularly sexy

One of the best books I've read in years.

The plot moves fast and you find yourself caring a great deal about these characters. Clement is extraordinary, and yet he feels completely real and believable.

I love Joey's narration--sly and seemingly cynical but also open to the possibility of higher things being at work. And how can you not love Linda?

When you think of what has happened to the Sioux, you wish everyone would read this book, which seems to call for a touch of justice It's also a hell of a ride.

I refuse to give any book five stars, but this story left me winded.

Years ago, I taught on the neighboring reservation and spent a lot of time on Pine Ridge. Sun Dancer and its fleshed-out characters took me back and that felt great. "Fleshed-out," what a funny choice of words when what I really mean is that their psyches and personalities felt completely real and deep and reminded me of friends and others on Pine Ride and Rose Bud and off the reservations, too.

I love how the story grips you and at the same advocates so passionately (and seemlessly) for a return of THE BLACK HILLS TO THE LAKOTA---or at least parts of the Black Hills. Yet it never feels like you're being lectured to. It's a fast, compelling story, but the message is there for anybody with brain and a heart.

I'm amazed that a fellow reviewer on this site accuses this novel of portraying the sun dance as a force of violence and armed rebellion, for through out the book the Sun Dance is clearly portrayed as a healing, cleansing, resorative and peaceful act. Above all, a spiritual and selfless act. Meanwhile, the proponents of armed conflict in the book are so clearly at odds with the sun dancer Clem and his mentor Bear Dreamer Bordeaux, who both clearly seek a non-violent path to Justice.

It's fine for people to have strong and politicized opinions, but why not READ the book before logging on?

I read SUN DANCER because I came across it on the web site of the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association, which bestowed its fiction prize on this book, and it has similarly honored the works of writers like N. Scott Momaday, Vine Deloria, James Welch and Leslie Marmon Silko, as well non-native writers like, Tony Hillerman, Cormac McCarthy, Wallace Stegner and Barbara Kingsolver.