Radiant Days: Writings by Enos Mills ed. by John Dotson (review)

214 WesternAmerican Literature like mountain mistbecause Cady’srealinterestisinfusing an eclecticAmerican spiritualism out ofChristian beliefs and the old gods ofaboriginal America. Cady’s protagonist, Harriette Johnson, is an acculturated Cherokee who returns to her home community to discover the truth of her past. Not particu­ larly traditional herself, she moves into her parents’house while investigating her father’smurder. With a picture of “the teachingJesus”on the wall in front of her and a mountain inhabited bya mythical tribe called the Nunnehi not far off, she is appropriately situated to begin the work ofreligious synthesis. In the course of the story, Harriette frequently muses about the irony of whitesknowingmore about the Cherokee than the Cherokee.Amongherwhite mentors is an aging historian named Warwick, whose mystic pronouncements smack of pedantry and smug superiority. Thus it is utterly unconvincing when Harriette muses: “Why did men have to get so old before they amounted to anything. . . . It must have been nearly perfect to have been married to Warwick.” Asifthis lackofcultural agencywere notbad enough, the narrator informs us that the protagonist cannot tell her own storybecause “Harriette explains by living, and I explain with words.”This coyness isjust plain irritating. Cady’sdescriptive prose is equally irritating. His ornate descriptions range from excessive to sillyand sometimes border on the stereotypical. For example, he paints this picture ofa Cherokee mixed blood: “He was tall, whiter than she butsortofdarkly. . .. Hiseyeslooked like polished, happychocolate. Hismouth smiled and not thin-lipped.”At other times, he simplydescribes Indian charac­ ters as “racial.” It’s hard to decide which descriptive technique is the most offensive. In short, the book isunconvincing. Even the religiouscontent isineffectual because Cadyrelies too much on awestruck adjectives to make his points about the place of “ineffable”in our lives. He should stick to science fiction. ELIZABETH BLAIR University ofIllinois at Chicago Radiant Days: Writings by Enos Mills. Edited byJohn Dotson. (Salt Lake City: University ofUtah Press, 1994. 224 pages, $35.00/$15.95.) Enos Mills shows us a world rich in grizzlies, mountain lions and majestic sweepingvistas. He understands his audience and does his share ofromanticiz­ ing and perhaps a little truth stretching—such are the demands of armchair adventure writing. But at times Mills has higher aspirations in his perambula­ tions: he wants to mix personal narrative with natural history, and isalwaysalert to spot a truth and draw a lesson. In a fine section, “Trailing Utah’s Shore Lines,”he strikes the balance. Reviews 215 At other times he isnot assuccessful. His incessant anthropomorphizing— Mr. Squirrel, Mother Bluebird—reminds this reader of Marty Stouffer, who once asked a Yellowstone fish, “Well, Mr. Cutthroat, how does it feel to be a trout?”Yetin one ofthe bestsections, “AMountain Pony,”one forgives Millsfor ascribing human qualities to a remarkable horse, Cricket, since horses arejust people with extra legs. Butwhere does one draw the line? Mrs. Coyote? Citizen Beaver? While Mills feels kinship with his four-legged brothers and sisters, he doesn’t seem to have much use for human companionship. Winter or summer, he takes to the trail alone. Mills shares the contemporary neurosis for solitude but is refreshingly pre-modern—his attention is always on the external. We learn almost nothing about him. He talks about the tree-in-itselfand its history, not about how its gnarls and twistedness give expression to his own turmoil. Some sections might persuade us to utter the name Enos Mills in the same breath asJohn Muir and MaryAustin. Other parts of this book belong on the shelfbeside our collection of “Wild America”videos. KEVIN HOLDSWORTH Wayne County, Utah Facesin theMoon. ByBettyLouise Bell. (Norman: UniversityofOklahoma Press, 1994. 193 pages, $19.95.) On one level, BettyLouise Bell’sunassuminglypoetic Faces in theMoon tells a universal story about the influences of family and upbringing on a woman’s sense of self. On another level, it tells the particularized narrative of three generations ofCherokee womenwho negotiate, through avarietyof strategies, not only generational conflict but cultural displacement and disparagement. Bell fuses these textual strands, collapsing one into the other, by anchoring Faces in the Moon on the redemptive act of storytelling. In so doing, she, as do writers such as Amy Tan, raises and challenges the spectre of a...