"This magical short-story collection concerning Jordan Coolwater begins in 1826 when four Cheyennes search for Galveston Bay. A "heatwave gauze ... rose off the plain and made things shimmer and seem not as they were," author Eddie Chuculate writes. "Something extraordinary was happening." Nearing the Gulf, the explorers encounter "wolves and coyotes ... throwing backward glances" at them, a fire that "rose up like the bluffs of a red canyon," and finally Indians who perform unusual ceremonies and wear "the strangest rainbow-colored feathers and necklaces of teeth."

Returned north after surviving a tornado, Old Bull, the leader of the party, "didn't speak of the trip for some time" until gradually it "assumed a dream-like quality in his mind, and children and grandchildren loved to hear the stories of turquoise-colored fish, screaming pigs," and other wondrous sights.

Following this originary tale, roughly 150 years pass. During the time between Old Bull's journey and the book's narrative present, the Creek, Cherokee and Cheyenne people in Jordan Coolwater's extended family have loved, married, drunk on reservations and in towns and cities, drunk some more, and either gone insane or died. "The word for 'drunk' in Creek is about the same as 'crazy,'" Chuculate notes. Now comes Jordan's chance to fail or succeed in life."

Get the Story:
'Cheyenne Madonna' a rich, eloquent debut (The Minnesota Star Tribune 9/19)