An Ojibwe writer from northern Minnesota's Leech Lake Reservation
debuts with a sad but graceful tale of seven people living in a
crumbling housing tract called Poverty. The first 25 or so pages -
on the desecration of the Mississippi River and the people's land -
may be some of the most depressing ever written, and it takes a
little effort to wade through them. It's worth it, though, as the
novel then unfolds with delicate human insight and engaging drama.
"Poverty" is the Kennedy-era housing tract in the corner of the
Minnesota reservation. The tract is in a forested area where, long
ago, twins Duke and Ellis built a cabin with their pregnant teenage
girlfriend, Jeannette. Now in their 70s, Duke and Ellis live in a
Pontiac Catalina parked outside the house where Jeannette lives
with daughter Celia and Celia's boyfriend, Stan, a Vietnam vet.
Also in the house is the six-fingered and mostly silent Little,
Celia's son (the father's identity is one of the central dramas
here), as well as Donovan, whom the twins found half-frozen in a
car crashed nearby. In Poverty's second house live Stan's sister
Violet - their father is in prison, their mother fled the
reservation long ago - and her daughter, Jackie. The unique bonds
these people have to each other are revealed as each character
tells his or her story: Stan recounts the night in Vietnam when his
best friend was killed; Jeannette her tale of being taken to Iowa
as a young girl to serve as maid servant to two elderly white
women; and Donovan reveals how Little, brimming with excitement,
climbed above Poverty and to his death. This clan forms an odd but
tightly knit unit that faces numerous deaths, rapes - of people and
of their land - and other hardships, transcending them all. They
claim Poverty, and poverty, as theirs, transforming it into a place
of beauty that perhaps only they can recognize. A splendid debut
that promises great things to come. (Kirkus Reviews)
On an Indian reservation in Minnesota, an empty grave is dug for
Little, whose body has never been found. The arrival and
disappearance of this strange child - who chooses only to speak the
word "you" - intersect with the destinies of a cast of characters,
through whose eyes the story unfolds.
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