The Ancient Child

by N. Scott Momaday

"An intriguing combination of myth, fiction, and storytelling that demonstrates the continuing power and range of Momaday's creative vision....These are magical words. Listen." — Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and poet   N. Scott Momaday shapes the ancient Kiowa myth of a boy who turned into a bear into a timeless American classic. The Ancient Child juxtaposes Indian lore and Wild West legend into a hypnotic, often lyrical contemporary novel. It is the story of Locke Setman, known as Set, a Native American raised far from the reservation by his adoptive father. Set feels a strange aching in his soul and, returning to tribal lands for the funeral of his grandmother, is drawn irresistibly to the fabled bear-boy. When he meets Grey, a beautiful young medicine woman with a visionary gift, his world is turned upside down. Here is a magical saga of one man's tormented search for his identity—a quintessential American novel, and a great one.

Genres: Fiction, Native American, Historical Fiction, Indigenous, Westerns, Mythology, Fantasy

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

N. Scott Momaday's baritone voice booms from any stage. The listener, whether at the United Nations in New York City or next to the radio at home, is transported through time, known as 'kairos"and space to Oklahoma near Carnegie, to the "sacred, red earth" of Momaday's tribe.

Born Feb. 27, 1934, Momaday's most famous book remains 1969's House Made of Dawn, the story of a Pueblo boy torn between the modern and traditional worlds, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize and was honored by his tribe. He is a member of the Kiowa Gourd Dance Society. He is also a Regents Professor of Humanities at the University of Arizona, and has published other novels, memoir, plays and poetry. He's been called the dean of American Indian writers, and he has influenced other contemporary Native American writers from Paula Gunn Allen to Louise Erdrich.

Momaday views his writings, published in various books over the years, as one continuous story. Influences on his writing include literature of America and Europe and the stories of the Kiowa and other tribal peoples.

"Native Americans have a unique identity," Momaday told Native Peoples Magazine in 1998. "It was acquired over many thousands of years, and it is the most valuable thing they have. It is their essence and it must not be lost."

Momaday founded The Buffalo Trust in the 1990s to keep the conversations about Native American traditions going. He especially wanted to give Native American children the chance to getting to know elders, and he wanted the elders to teach the children the little details of their lives that make them uniquely Native American. Once the Buffalo Trust arranged for Pueblo children to have lesson from their elders in washing their hair with yucca root as their ancestors did for as long as anyone can remember.

"In the oral tradition," Momaday has said, "stories are not told merely to entertain or instruct. They are told to be believed. Stories are realities lived and believed."

Reviews

[Amber · Rating 1 out of 5]

What is this, Tom Robbins of the Plains? Stop exoticizing women; they're humans too.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love M. Scott Momaday and because I love The Way to Rainy Mountain and House Made of Dawn, I made myself finish The Ancient Child. I kept thinking, "This will be worth it. He'll surprise me." Nope. No surprises. There is some beautiful language in here and the premise of the book is fascinating, but the characters are flat, there are way too many cliches and the plot is predictable.

[Cornerofmadness · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to read an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winner for the popsugar challenge and Momaday is a lifetime achievement winner so I selected this. Honestly I think I would have been better off with his poetry but this is what my library had. I'm always happy to read an Indigenous author but I have to say this just didn't work for me.

It has a lot of 'artistic' elements, such a uber short paragraphs mixed in with long, flowing omniscient points of view, lush descriptions (too long IMO), poetic language and an attempt to make it feel like a story from Native folklore. I appreciate these techniques but still it failed to draw me in. I didn't connect or care about these characters which was so disappointing because two of the main characters had backstories that I usually go for: Setman is an artist who has lost his spark and has never been in touch with his Kiowa culture having been orphaned at an early age (Momaday is Kiowa). Grey is a young woman who has visions.

What we get however, is a disaffected Set coming to Oklahoma when an elderly relative is on her deathbed. He's not even sure why he went (and gets there too late) because he doesn't know these people. He's immediately taken by Grey who is meant to help him find himself. Unfortunately I found Set (in his 40s) interest in the teenaged Grey (who is somewhere between 17-19) to be frankly creepy.

For me the story wasn't helped by Grey's visions which seem to be more like time travel with her spending time with historic figures like A.G. Bell and Billy the Kid. It was a muddied timeline and story progression. Ah well.

[Jeri Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

OK, I originally was going to give "The Ancient Child" three stars. I mean, I liked it. Momaday can write and all. I mean, he did win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969 for his first book, "House Made of Dawn." Two decades later came his second book, "The Ancient Child," a retelling of a Native American tale with a modern Kiowa artist searching for his roots was pretty damn confusing.

Billy The Kid? A bear? Huh?

But then came my meet-up with my book club to discuss our latest pick.

We dove into Momaday, a Kiowa himself, and heard how his fellow Native Americans see time as static, as something they come to and leave behind. OK. Then, we read some passages and saw how he uses his background in poetry to make passages sing. Alright. Then, we looked into how he has "The Ancient Child" into separate books with titles like "Planes" and "Shadows." I passed right over that, thinking nothing of it other than that their narrative speed bumps in the book. Then came a question from Chris, a college professor, to Don, an artist.

"Isn't that elements of a painting?"

Don pauses and answers.

"Yes."

That's when it hit me. We had read a painting. Momaday has structured his book like a canvas. Damn.

Love it when moments like that happen when discussing a book. It sheds light and helps you understand from what you originally thought was incredibly confusing. I was far from alone. But that one epiphany sparked more discussions about the need to reread "The Ancient Child" to see what we missed and what we still need to absorb. Neat.

Momaday is now 84, a former Guggenheim Fellow who now teaches at the University of Arizona. He has written six works of fiction and six books of poetry. Recently, a writer with the Smithsonian magazine asked him how his Native American heritage and his childhood in The Great Depression defined his writing.

His response: "It was all a very good thing for my imagination and it gave me a subject."

Indeed.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book of self-discovery and the healing power of storytelling is truly magical. I have read it more than once - not a common occurrence for me - and try to make a point of reading it in times of exploration and recuperation. It has the power to transport its reader to mythological time, to the time of one's own mythmaking. Highly recommended.

[Sofia Dale · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay, there's a lot to unpack in this one. This also includes SPOILERS...

Overall, I did not like the book. I guess I had assumed the story to be similar to the classic Brother Bear, or some adaptation of it. And, I am familiar with the various Native American folklore of men turning into bears and its spiritual element. But, I felt Ancient Child was just a book that left readers confused while having every other page be a form of sexualizing women, specifically the main character. It completely overshadows the synopsis of the book and feels very misleading. Especially because we don't see elements of the bear until the final third/fourth of the book.

Grey is the young Native American girl who is 18/19 turning 20 throughout the book. And it is so bizarre, because either she is (as Set first meets her) this feral dirty "boyish looking" girl that creeps around, only comes around in the middle of the night, and barely speaks, or this beautiful girl with constant mentions of her body in some sexualized manner. Which gets even weirder when she marries a man in his 40s? and we find out she lost her virginity when she was younger (maybe a year or so back, who knows) to someone 10yrs her senior.
And just in my personal opinion, it is in poor taste for a male author to talk about a girl's body turning more womenly in a transition phase while sexualizing her the whole book. It rather could have been done in a more tasteful way that maybe highlighted the adoring aspects of what it means to be a woman, or the spiritual element of that transition in Native American culture.
Overall, I felt her character was the classic "women written by men". There was such a lack of depth to all the characters, and the only elements we get from Grey are shallow and lack consistency. And why when Set is fighting for his life, in a state of complete confusion and delerium is Grey talking about farting horses?? What editor left that in?

Billy the kid was also a weird element to include because it felt his character didn't fit the story to any capacity. Perhaps his character was supposed to highlight the free and wild feeling of Grey, but it just felt irrelevant and out of place in relation to what is supposed to be the main plot of the book. On the other hand, I did appreciate some of the descriptors of the landscape/nature and the mentions of old practices.

I was just hoping for more about Native American culture, but reader's only get that aspect and a grasp on the book at the end of the story. Even then, it feels there's so much missing.

So, while there are good elements, and the book highlights individual's importance to connect with their heritage, it was poorly written and terribly confusing. Not one I'd want to recommend or read again.

[Laura Hoffman Brauman]

The Ancient Child is a retelling of sorts of the Kiowa myth about a boy who turned into a bear and his sisters became the stars in the Big Dipper. Set is a famous artist, a Native American man who was raised by adoptive parents after the death of his father. When he receives a letter about the impending death of a grandmother he didn’t know, he returns to tribal lands and sets on a path about identity. Grey is a young medicine woman whose visions tell her of the role she will play in Set’s search and her story is intertwined with his throughout the novel. I appreciated the beautiful language within here - there were some passages that were just stunning in their descriptions of the natural world. This is definitely not linear storytelling and it took me a good 1/3 of the book to get into a flow of moving between visions and the current storyline, and I’m sure there was a lot I still didn’t understand, but the writing was good enough to pull me along. There were some elements of how the writer described the female characters that didn’t work so well for me - I am kind of over books where men fall in love with women that could be their daughters. All that being said, I’m glad I picked this up and there was much in here that I appreciated. Many of the reviews of the book said that this wasn’t as strong as some of his other work, so I will definitely look to read others by the author.

[Lilia Noger-Onstott · Rating 4 out of 5]

it’s just such a beautiful book. the imagery, poetry, art, and story blend together so well. only reason a star was docked is because of the weird descriptions of the 18-yr-old girl like damn it’s obvious this was written by a man. but god everything else is fantastic

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

Impression at the beginning of the book: "I don't understand what's going on, but it sounds pretty."

Impression in the middle: "I'm starting to get it, and it's still pretty, but also boring and sometimes grotesque."

Impression at the end: "...huh. I think I got it. It was pretty. I don't know if I liked it."

So, what I got out of this is that it's a story of the search for identity, finding oneself, and eventually transformation for a tortured artist-type-Kiowa-guy. The poetry of Momaday's language is something to behold. The characters were well-drawn, with many facets and without much of a core identity (but I grew to see that was part of the point--who are we? How do we know?)



The fact that it was so poetic was problematic for me, though--a lot of the time, I didn't feel that the characters spoke like real people or that their relationships were described in a way that made sense to me on a human level. For example, I didn't understand why Set's girlfriend was often referred to by her first and last name, Lola Bourne. Was this even partially from Set's viewpoint? If so, why would he think of his girlfriend in such an impersonal way? Or was that part of the point--that they weren't really fit for each other?

Also, the sex scenes--particularly the rape scene in which Grey is imagining herself with Billy the Kid, but then sort of wakes up and realizes she's being raped--were disturbing to me at first, but I grew to understand the point of them. Grey was always powerful and in control--of her imagination, of whom she chose to be with, and even ultimately over her rapist when, refusing to be frightened, she took immediate vengeance on him. She was contrasted with Set, who seemed to, on a couple of occasions in his life, just have sex with whomever made overtures to him at the time and whom he found attractive. This passivity in his sexuality was a symbol of his search for identity--he went along with these relationships, but ultimately they were not enough to fulfill the emptiness inside of him. In the end, it seemed that he just went along with Grey too, although it seemed to be somehow necessary to his search for himself. She represented something that he was meant to be.

At times, I was irritated by what I perceived as the author's male filter through which he wrote this book--there are plentiful nipples, curves, etc. that seemed gratuitous until I saw what I mentioned above. Despite my analysis, though, I still haven't decided how much of the sexuality in the book seems like something those characters would actually do (such as Grey popping out her boob in front of Set in the truck on the journey to Lukachukai) and how much is really just wishful male fantasy. Either way, it tripped me up as a reader and drew me out of the story.

I really didn't understand the Billy the Kid scenes at the beginning of the book, but I'm not sure that the reader was meant to understand that until it's explained that Grey is envisioning all of it, and that her visions of the old west are an important part of her childhood and young adulthood.



Overall, this was a beautifully poetic novel with awkward pacing that I found boring at times, and characters with whom I couldn't identify, even if I have also struggled with a search for identity.

[Marion Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have shared many times on my blog I read for story, characters, setting, and what an author is trying to say about life. Story is my reading language.  I don't put down many books once I read them.  However, if there's no story, I'm out as a reader.  I will admit that I don't read for beautiful language.  I know a lot of book lovers read for beautiful language.  Words that soar off the page and have a sound that connects with their imagination.  I can appreciate that aspect of reading and how the power of words can entrance you as a reader.

There is always exception to any self-imposed reading rule that one tries to adhere too.  The Ancient Child by N. Scott Momaday is that rule breaker for me.  I liked the story of Locke Setman, known as Set.  But the prose like this passage kept me reading and made me marvel at the beauty of these words:




He saw the black trees leaning

in different ways, their limbs

tangled in the mottled clouds,

the clouds rolling on themselves;

a wide belt of four colors,

yellow, orange, red, and black,

and stars in the tangled limbs.




A woman named Grey that has a fascination with Billy The Kid wrote that passage. Also, she has a divine connection to Set that will play out over the course of the novel in surprising ways. I found her just as fascinating as Set and knew their connection was inevitable.

Set is connected to a bear-boy that affects him deeper than he could have ever imagine. Momaday takes the hero's journey in The Ancient Child on an interesting path that is part vignette, part poetry, and part prose fiction intertwining into a fascinating novel.  I know this book deserves a second or third reading to get the full scope of Momaday's story.  The Ancient Child is one of my favorite reads of 2020, and I'm glad that I came across this book from a Goodreads recommendation.  Older books (this was published in 1989) get overlooked, but if you want to read something unique and thought-provoking, this novel fits the bill.

[Olive · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is well written, albeit challenging with the shifts in tense and settings. My main problem with the book is the oversexualization of the female characters. You cannot escape a few chapters, or pages, before the author mentions a women's breasts.

One of the main characters, Grey, a 19 year old Native girl is the most sexualized out of all female characters. She is also treated as an exotic character due to her heritage. A lot of scenes with her include some mention of breasts or other sexually related topic. She really was just made to appeal to the male fantasy, including the main male character, Set. She also ends up marrying a 45 year old man, Set, at the end and has a child with him.

This book also has a lot of mentions of sexual abuse, including a rape scene. The book is dirty, and not a good kind, but rather the kind that makes you want to vomit and stop reading.

I kept reading it to see if it got better. It didn't. I closed to book at the end with no sense of closure or accomplishment. I don't understand how it connects to the synopsis on the back, however that may be because of reading level, I suppose.

Overall the plot jumps around, makes confusing references to other places in history which the characters should have not known in their time period.

The characters are flat and boring. I did not like any of them except a side character that had little to nothing to contribute to the plot.

The poems were a nice change in pace. Not good enough to carry the book, however.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most original books I have ever read, filled with quintessential Native American themes, but in a fresh and beautiful way that combines myth and drama with what it means to be human and how that identity is tangled with your heritage and intimately linked to landscape. I feel like this is a book about America, one of the true versions of America, and combines themes of modern life, ancient tribal life, and Native American myths with Wild West myths to make a wholly original story that resonates more with me than most intellectual, pretentious works of literature.

"He had a strange feeling there, as if some ancestral intelligence had been awakened in him for the first time. There is the wild growth and the soft glowing of the earth, in the muddy water at his feet, was something profoundly original. He could not put his finger on it, but it was there. It was itself genesis, he thought, not genesis in the public domain, not an Old Testament Tale, but his genesis. He wanted to see his father there in the shadows of the still creek, the child he once was, himself in the child and the man. But he could not. there was only something like a photograph, old and faded, a shadow within a shadow."

[Rebecca Linton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably my favorite book. I try to read it about every five years. Momaday is such a beautiful writer. You can tell that he chooses his words carefully, and the result is so yummy. And with Native Americans, artists, a strong woman and Billy the Kid, this book speaks to all my fantasies.

[Holly Troup · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved N. Scott Momaday's HOUSE MADE OF DAWN, and so I was pleased to find THE ANCIENT CHILD in a used book store.Combing myth and fiction, Momaday tells a magic tale of a man's search for his identity. Locke Setman( Set), a Kiowa Native American, was raised by his adoptive father far from his tribal home. When his grandmother dies, Set returns to the reservation for the funeral.....

[Beachbumgarner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ordered this book after the recent death of N. Scott Momaday whose book, House Made of Dawn, I loved back in college. What I loved in his writing then is more loved and appreciated now--the voice of a true storyteller, a storyteller who includes and blends and intertwines the impossible, the magical, with the ordinary and likely until you have a picture of a designed truth: not the impossible or the possible any longer, but what is, the reality. Momaday's insight is incredible.

He begins with a Native/Kiowa myth of a boy who becomes a bear and his sisters who become the stars of the Big Dipper. He adds a Native girl of Kiowa and Navajo heritage who is becoming a medicine woman with the help of her dying, and then dead, grandmother. To the myth he adds the Wild West Legend of Billie the Kid, who became a legend not so much for his ruthlessness as his youthful humor. And then he adds a young man of Kiowa heritage who is trying to make it in the art world by painting what his agent wants him to paint but losing his soul in the process. And finally, Momaday creates and describes all these pieces of the puzzle as if they are on a canvas, being painted with his chapters being divided by subtitles Lines, Planes, Shapes and Shadows. Not only do you hear the story take shape in beautiful language that includes poetry and prose, but you see it too.

I think what makes Momaday's work so exceptional is his perception of time. A moment includes all that is in it right now as well as everything from the past that led to creating it and everything in the future that it will become. His viewpoint does not work to divide these facets but to integrate them which provides a sense of wholeness to his subjects, and thus his story. While I was reading his words and seeing his images, my mind was constantly looking for and finding connections. It was clear that he was speaking to the Ancient Child in each of us, exhorting us to acknowledge that the myth and legend of his people are included, and not to be dismissed or disremembered or parted from the myth and legend and future of America.

I loved this book, and I thank N. Scott Momaday for his wisdom and his beautiful words, poems and stories.

[Vitani Days · Rating 5 out of 5]

Davvero una bella lettura, questa di Momaday (autore ancora semi-sconosciuto qui in Italia). Una storia che intreccia la vita di un pittore di origini Kiowa con la mitologia dei nativi americani (la vicenda del "bambino-orso" in particolare) e con la storia di Billy the Kid. I veri protagonisti del romanzo, al di là delle figure umane che vi si muovono, sono i paesaggi naturali, le sterminate pianure dell'Arizona, i suoi cieli, le sue tempeste. E' una natura potente, quella che viene presentata, ma mai nemica. Una natura non da dominare, ma da cui lasciarsi abbracciare, temprare, in cui trovare la vera forza.
Proprio in questa natura si muove la splendida figura di Grey, una giovane donna metà Navajo e metà Kiowa, simbolo di un'umanità naturale e bella, quasi primigenia. Lei diviene emblema delle pianure stesse, della pioggia, dell'uomo che si forma nella natura secondo le proprie esigenze interiori e i propri sensi. E' una guaritrice e sarà lei a dare a Set, nel momento della più grande depressione, i mezzi per aiutarlo a diventare ciò che realmente è: l'orso, l'emblema della natura e della forza assoluta. Intanto, attraverso di lui, completerà se stessa come donna.
Fa da cornice il racconto romanzato della vita di Billy the Kid, emblematico il debutto: "Quien es?", perché questo romanzo è proprio la storia della ricerca di un'identità, del "ritorno alle origini". Addirittura al mito, in questo caso. Un viaggio dentro se stessi attraverso le tradizioni, i rituali, la natura dei nativi americani. Da leggere!

[Kristin]

I had to read N.S.M. in college, but not this book, and had never even heard of this book--discovered it by shelf and whiled an afternoon reading it, becoming increasingly uncomfortable until abandoning it. It's very beautifully and captivatingly written, but it becomes apparent that the whole book is ultimately a fantasy sexualizing a 19 year old girl. This figure is clearly coming from the author's personal experience, which makes it not right. I googled how old the author was in 1989, the publish year, and the answer is 55. I can't find reasons that I want anything to do with in which a 55 year old man is writing this material about a 19 year old girl. Unfortunate, as without that, it was going to have a dreamy Amos Oz quality to it (incidentally, his material also veers into uncomfortable sexual territory, only always featuring young men with older women, the opposite). Sometimes our literary heroes are freaky in the sheets...

[John Benson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have really enjoyed N. Scott Momaday's writing in the past and even once included him in an academic paper I gave at a geography conference on connections to place by different authors. At the time, I had read only his memoirs and essays. However, a few years ago, I picked up his first novel, HOUSE MADE OF DAWN, and found it disappointing, as I did this, his second novel. This book includes two key characters: Set, an orphaned middle-aged artist who is called to Oklahoma to attend a funeral for his grandmother, a woman he never remembers meeting, and Grey, a young women who was mentored by Set's grandmother to be a young medicine woman. These characters are brought out well, but the plot jumps all over the place, from Grey immersing herself in Billy the Kid's life at one point and Set being seen as a mythical bear. While the characters seem clear, the plot does not. I appreciated his memoirs and essays much more than I did this novel, and his earlier one.

[Susan Emmet · Rating 2 out of 5]

I so wanted to love this novel, but I didn't.
I re-read many passages to see if I could better understand what was happening.
I appreciate the interweaving of myth and history, as well as the "shaping" of chapters like a painting reminiscent of Set the painter and bear/man - Planes, Lines, Shapes, Shadows.
The insistent sexualizing of female characters was disturbing. And I have no idea why Billy the Kid is included as a dream character.
Perhaps I need to reread the entire book, but I don't want to right now.
I think I'll re-read other Momaday novels to rediscover his power as a writer.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a five among fives. This book is perhaps the strangest, most intriguing, most difficult, most poetic that I have read in a long, long time.
I do not yet understand all of it. This must be because I am a neophyte in the realm of Indian lore and story-telling.
This book requires thought, query, a relaxing of the dominant belief, a clear mind in a slurry of patterns. This book has effected me in a way I have hoped to be but hadn't expected to be.
This book draws me into a new field of interest and study - no, it demands it of me. And so I will...

[Wendy Jensen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The beauty of this book was its descriptions of inner feelings and thoughts, moving seamlessly from one character to another. But it didn't suit me, as I had to concentrate very hard to follow a story line. I think this is intentional in the style, because it's a play between different fables, from Billy the Kid to local American Indian stories, all mixed up into a modern story. So read it for the descriptions and not the story.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This magical-realistic novel progresses like a dream, bits and pieces coming together and sliding apart. Yet, there is a story that moves from beginnings to ends and that comes together, and that references modern art, historical events, and indian lore and myth. Momaday is a visual artist and a published poet - even if the story puzzles at times, which I expect it will, the writing is superb. I underlined many sentences in the book, just because the language was beautiful and original.

[Tyler Horton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The novel works with several layers at once and I think I just didn't get it clearly enough. Much of it is beautiful and haunting. My impression is that it is quite understated and I think I don't have enough context with Indigenous North American cultures to pick up on what Momaday is doing here. I would definitely give it another go and in that, expect I would rate it higher. I would also let those who may want to know that there are a number of sexually explicit scenes in the novel.

[Andrew Hodgson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Difficult to decide if I enjoyed this. Feels like a story with puzzle pieces missing- not crucial like in a mystery, but a more haphazard writing. I think well written, but I did at times have to pick it up like a chore. Definitely a lot of words describing the sexiness of each female character.

[Hobey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the best book to read short bits of sporadically. Nothing here that I found particularly striking, except for when the old man goes out to the backyard and sees one last time the wildflowers there.

[Sumit · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the strangest books I've ever read - neither prose nor poetry, neither story nor essay, this was something more of a prose poem full of magical realism and ancient legend. Not always enjoyable, but always interesting.

[Cory Potts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second of Momaday’s books that I’ve read. Was initially put off by the long chapter headings and shifts in narration. The explanation or reveal was very well done and made me like this one better than house of Dawn

[Reid Baccio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful exploration of a man's mid-life crisis and grief and how he renewed his life by embracing his heritage! And with the help of a beautiful woman!

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mythical and lyrical but sometimes hard to follow.

[Donny J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic tale of Native American literature. Gets a bit confusing, but very satisfying tale of self discovery--sacrifice yourself to yourself, I feel is the end message.