Native by William Haywood Henderson (review)

166 WesternAmerican Literature Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. All three involve road trips across many states with reprobate narrators. But while Nabokov’s novel is a mesmeriz­ ing psychological study of a shameless pedophile, and Thompson’s is a truly zany, madcap adventure with a cavalier narcotics abuser, Sandlin’s is an awk­ wardly modern Dickens tale with an unlikely heroine. Moreover, all the charac­ ters have at least three notable, if not memorable, quirks; the ragtag group eventually becomes one big happy family; a major character dies; and the heroine gets her act together. The only thing missing is the fmal-chapter loose-ends wrap-up. Given Maurey’s preoccupation with genitalia, unpleasant sexual experi­ ences, and self-pity, the style of humor fails in the Dickensian mode. Rather than cheer her on, we begin to believe in Maurey’s self-contempt as much as she does. As she cuts the waist-long hair ofan adolescent boy, for example, she says, “The scissors were a silver canoe gliding through a golden lake. All these metaphors made myclitoris throb.”Certainly, Sandlin shouldn’t be expected to write like a Victorian, let alone like Dickens; but as Maurey herselfsays, “I’m not a snob or anything, but bad taste offends me.” LORRAINE ENGSTROM Utah State University Native. By William Haywood Henderson. (New York: Dutton, 1993. 250 pages, $20.00.) Beginning with the hero’sdevotion to Steve in Owen Wister’s The Virginian, close male bonds have often been portrayed in classic Westerns. This modern Western also depicts these male relationships, such as when a retired rancher admits that he misses his trusted hired hand “like I miss nothing else.” These intense male bonds, according to Eve Sedgwick in Between Men, create patriar­ chal culture, yet any man who transgresses homosocial association into homo­ sexual desire faces ostracism. Native tracks a respected ranch foreman, nicknamed Blue, across a Wyo­ ming cattle range and into an emotional territory beyond the boundaries of his western community. Although his journeys through the mountainous setting are narrated in compelling detail, the protagonist’s exploration of his own desires creates the drama of this novel. Using limited omniscient narration, Native follows Blue’s introspections over his own emotional landscape, and Blue’s reflections on his drifter father and his enduring mother are as skillfully portrayed as Bruce Mason’s memories of his parents in Wallace Stegner’s The BigRock Candy Mountain. The perspective also shifts briefly to the viewpoints of the two other main characters. Sam is the worker to whom Blue is attracted, and Gilbert is a Native American who considers himself a modern day berdache-the anthropological Reviews 167 term for the homosexual men that some, but not all, tribes once accepted as holy figures. This cross-cultural contrast challenges the binary opposition of masculine and feminine, but Gilbert is the least credible major character; his supposed allure is disrupted too often by his abrasiveness. The scenes of Blue’s ostracism, depicted with convincing complexity, are much more effective. As the townspeople begin to question the nature of his care of injured Sam, Blue acknowledges the economic troubles that contribute to the townspeople’s intolerance. Their hostility is also complicated by doubt; for example, two other ranch hands reconsider their rejection of “a good guy to work with and to know”before reaffirming that “he went sour.”Although Blue carries the burden of such intolerance during his personaljourney, he finally arrives by making an emotional commitment without abandoning the western setting he loves. DONALD C.JONES University ofNew Hampshire The Death ofBernadette Left-hand. By Ron Querry. (Santa Fe: Red Crane Books, 1993. 215 pages, $12.95.) Although the focus of this new novel is the senseless murder of the title character, Ron Querry is less concerned with offering a traditional whodunit than with exploring the sometimes bleak, precarious, even hostile life facing too many Native Americans—a life often marked by alcoholism, unemployment, alienation, disillusionment. However, Querry also provides a touching and informative portrait of daily life on reservation lands—ranging from Taos Pueblo to Jicarilla Apache to Navajo—and he juxtaposes the spiritualism of Indian cultures with white values from...