Next North Dakota Reads book

Do you want to learn more about the deep connections between past and present generations in Sioux belief and culture? Read The Grass Dancer by Susan Power, the next North Dakota Reads title. Books are available at Stoxen Library. The book discussion is Thursday, April 17.

The author won the Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award for first fiction, 1995, for The Grass Dancer. The book conveys the stories of people on a Sioux reservation whose lives intersect and intertwine, briefly, or over a lifetime, and how their relationships affect one another. The reader meets them much as one does in real life, starting with the present and working backwards. The story unravels the mystery of why the characters behave the way they do. Each chapter is told from the perspective of one character and charts the incidents which develop his or her personality.

The characters are complex and often troubled; they struggle with the magic that swirls around them. Power hits on many aspects of an Indian's life: the gap between Indian and white culture, the problems that arise out of dual heritage, disease, spirits, magic, ancestral powers, religion, and love.

This is a book that can be read at different levels. The first read can be confusing, but a second reading reveals the depth of the work. Through her story, Powers weaves the past, present and future into the present.