Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #789667 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Heavy with exposition in its early sections, Lesley's second novel waits too long to achieve its potential, but it displays the same knowledge of Native American culture and rich evocation of the Oregon's Columbia River valley that distinguished his well-received Winterkill . In this sequel, Nez Perce Danny Kachiah has grown older and more conscious of the vanishing culture to which he belongs. Sobered by the recent death of his former wife Loxie in a car accident, Danny welcomes the arrival of his 17-year-old son Jack, whom he barely knows. Danny sees their belated reunion as an opportunity to educate Jack in the tribal traditions. He also hopes to discourage the boy from taking up the career of rodeo riding that Danny himself once pursued. When a friend's grandson drowns and mourning custom forces the man to stay off the river for a year, Danny and Jack take over his fishing boat. They battle nature, the ghost of Loxie, who haunts them both, and sport fishermen who want to drive the Indians off the river. While the prose is crisp and clean and the dialogue gritty and natural, the novel does not engage the reader until its halfway mark. From this point however, as the narrative tension mounts, Lesley also begins to convey the magic of Indian ways. Readers who persist will be rewarded with a story that is, in the end, quietly but resonantly memorable.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Lesley's first novel, Winterkill (LJ 5/1/84), was a Hemingwayesque tale of fathers and sons and of the ritual of the hunt. This new novel continues both the story of former rodeo rider Danny Kachiah and his son, Jack, and also author Lesley's exploration of how the past interweaves with the present. Danny and Jack help fight a gigantic forest fire, are drawn into a violent struggle for Indian fishing rights on the Columbia River, learn how to placate the ghosts that haunt them, and find love. The Native American characters, the Pacific Northwest settings, and the Nez Perce tribal lore all combine to provide a new way of looking at the old themes of the rites of passage and of the community of all living things. Though Winterkill was more self-contained, thisis still recommended.
- Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"A skillfully told story that illuminates the plight of American Indians as they battle to keep their way of life."—Michael Lichtenstein, The New York Times Book Review

"Craig Lesley's style flows like a river, always irresistibly carving its course to the end."—Robert Rafferty, The Washington Post Book World

"Winterkill was a spell of language I wanted never to end, and blessedly the story now flows on in River Song. Craig Lesley has given us another greathearted book."—Ivan Doig

"It is Mr. Lesley's considerable achievement as a storyteller that, while conveying so much information to readers unfamiliar with the territory, a small family of characters emerges. In love and in conflict, they are burdened by all the human frailties and dreams."—Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times

Customer Reviews

Indian Gonzo Journalism
This is a story about contemporary American Indian life around the Washington State and Oregon border. The author begins his acknowledgments by telling us "...this novel places fictional characters in actual places and against some historical events." The acknowledgments continue to reveal his considerable research into the history and anthropology of the Indians who live along the Columbia River, even as to the variation in pronunciation and spelling of certain Native American words from band to band. Indeed, the book reads as if many of the incidents, conflicts and jokes in the story are embellished recollections of actual events. Although billed as fiction, River Song is more a chronicle on the folklore and contemporary lifestyle of some Northwest Indians. I'll call it Indian Gonzo Journalism.

In River Song, you are going to read about the trials and tribulations of a people living in trailers or BIA housing, and who refer to The Treaty on occasion. They are stuck together by an ethnic bond, but in culture that allows them to con and cheat one another. These people know how to pronounce Tiskaatpama and Tsau-tsau; they might eat at Cimiyetti's restaurant or picnic in Happy Canyon or at Preacher's Point. Although the principal characters have common names like Danny, Jack, and Willis, you will also meet Iggy Two Medicine, Lucy Pretty Mink, and "one of the best-looking young women around Mission," who never wears a bra, called Trudy Two Sleeps, perhaps because her winnemucca has been here and there.

These people survive near the bottom rung of the ladder by rodeoing, picking fruit and fishing. They save the Segram's Seven for "Code Blue Emergencies." As migrant workers, Danny and Jack work along side illegal immigrants, Mexicans, who are the brunt of all their jokes.

River Song is not just about the economic struggle of a band of contemporary Native Americans. Mr. Lesley tells us something of their history, and their beliefs, about Steah-hah masks, Night Ghosts, Weyekin animal spirits, and the value of dentalia shells. Danny, the protagonist, has a vision of the Chinese Massacre of 1887 on the Snake River, an actual event. At first, Danny doesn't know the relevance of this vision, doesn't recognize the river, and is even uncertain as to whether the victims are Indians or Chinese with suntans. To sort it out, he consults Wauna the medicine woman and we learn how these people tame their ancestral spirits.

Being a Yankee raised amongst buttercups and maple trees, I also learned more than I ever wanted to know about the vegetation in Northern Oregon. Up there they have bunch grass, hackberry, klamath weeds, service berries, snake-biscuit, blue bachelor buttons, bitter brush, camas bulbs, lupine, cheat grass, balsam root, rock lilies, and bluebells, to name a few. Leslie Craig did teach me something valuable, though. Now I can to tell the difference between Indians and Chinese with suntans. The Indian is the one telling the Mexican joke.

Good follow-up to ýWinterkillý
"River Song" picks up where Lesley's previous novel, "Winterkill," left off. Unfortunately, it's not as strong as its predecessor, since some of the situations the characters become involved in seem a bit contrived. Lesley seems to resort to the device of suspense to keep the story going: early in the novel, the main character, Danny Kachiah, has a disturbing vision which he spends much of the novel trying to figure out by visiting, among other things, a medicine woman on the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho. It seems that this whole aspect of the story was added just to tie in certain actual historical events and give the characters an excuse to travel about the countryside in Eastern Oregon and Idaho. Also, Danny eventually figures out where his vision took place, but Lesley never really explains how. In the hands of a lesser writer, this would have been grounds for tossing the book aside, but Lesley has such a talent for evoking place and time that it's hardly noticeable while you're reading. Thus, Lesley's engrossing style tends to gloss over these and other shortcomings, making "River Song" a very compelling tale. The other aspect of the story, the struggle of the Native Americans along the Columbia River to maintain their fishing rights and thereby preserve their traditions, is handled very well. In a very direct yet unassuming style, Lesley adeptly describes the frustations of the River People in dealing with the U.S. government, the local authorities, commerical fishing operations and sport fishermen and even windsurfers. As with "Winterkill," the characters in "River Song" are very believable, and you often find yourself thinking about them as real people - which attests to Lesley's talent as a top-notch writer.

River Song
A wonderful novel about the cultures and the rivers of the Pacific Northwest. This is one of my favorite novels. When I teach it, my students find that it changes the way they look at the world. Read it!