Northern Lights: A Selection of New Writings from the American West ed. by Deborah Clow, Donald Snow (review)

Reviews 223 rary college and university campuses to steadfastly developing his antithesis (and antidote?), an eclectic and pluralistic but principled Native American cosmography. And he does so in a fashion for which he himself once praised James Welch’s Fools Crow, one “offering no apologies or explanations for a magical interweaving of natural and supernatural.” Along the way, Owens creates an overall interesting and readable novel. Some of the book’s characters are fascinating repeat performers readers of Owens will recognize, and most of the characters are humanized and well conceived. Though the murder mysteryitselfisnotverywellveiled—despite an intended surprise plot twist, many readers likelywill figure out early on who is doing the killing—the other mysteries the novel dealswith are denserand more compelling. And while the story lags somewhat in the middle and is arguably overwrought and perhaps thematically a bit confused at the end, it possesses a power beyond mere logic, maybe in part because ofthis veryunevenness. One of the strongest and most enjoyable traits of the novel is its “Indian” humor, one of the manyvehicles Owens uses to allow his characters to reclaim their Indianness. From the cross-dressing Navajo trickster-figure, the heyoka Alex Yazzie, to an insidejab at TonyHillerman—“He isNavajo, isn’t he?”main character Cole McMurtrain knowingly asks Alex—Owens keeps the reader laughing. On the whole, then, Louis Owens deserves the attention he is currently receiving as he revitalizes murder mysteries and adds to the growing body of impressive fiction by Native American authors. Like them—the Welches, Erdrichs, Silkos, Momadays, and so forth—he iswriting within certain Ameri­ can literary traditions while simultaneously adding new dimensions to them. DAVID CREMEAN Bowling Green State University Northern Lights: A Selection of New Writings from the American West. Edited by Deborah Clow and Donald Snow. (NewYork: Vintage Books, 1994. 398 pages, $13.00.) Northern Lights magazine (which publishes from Missoula, Montana) has long been a premier venue for new writing about the American West. This recentbook bythe same title collectsoverfortyessaysand poems bymanyofthe gifted writers who helped put Northern Lightson the literary map. As Deb Clow and Don Snow put it in their forward, contributors to Northern Lights “may be discussing . . . horses, orgasms, beetle-kill, Dutch ovens, canoe trips, curling, Gifford Pinchot, viruses, Vietnam, assassination, acid rain, caffeine, or sports medicine, but they will invariably be discussing these somehow in relation to place. The place isthe West.” Although the scope of the book may appear unreasonably broad, the 224 Western American Literature impressive qualityof the writing and the consistent focus upon place provide it with remarkable continuity. The volume’s now-established writers include Ed­ ward Abbey, Terry Tempest Williams, Richard Nelson, Gretel Ehrlich, William Kittredge,John Daniel, DavidQuammen, and GaryNabhan, though it isworth noting that several of these writers were not well known when their work first appeared in NorthernLightsmagazine. Forexample, readers maybe surprised to learn thatWilliams’s“The Clan ofOne-BreastedWomen”made itsfirstappear­ ance in the magazine, as did Abbey’sdelightful “Something About Mac, Cows, Poker, Ranchers, Cowboys, Sex, and Power .. . and Almost Nothing About American Lit.” Despite itsroster ofliteraryluminaries, one ofthe genuine pleasures ofthis book is the fine work by less familiar writers such as Ellen Meloy, Bill Vaughn, and Leslie Ryan. Meloy’s “Communiqué from the Vortex of Gravity Sports” takes a comical look at the ironies of “wilderness experience”on a river packed solid with partying, Day-Glo-clad, fashion-conscious “nature lovers.”In “Notes from the Squalor Zone,” Vaughn examines that “other West”—not the trope-filled landscape of cowboys or climbers, but the “Big-Dog-and-Trailer belt” of poverty that surrounds many cities in the West. Among the most powerful pieces in the collection, Leslie Ryan’s “The Clearing in the Clearing” and “The Other Side ofFire”make vital connections between personal lossand the regenerative power ofwilderness. Asolid collection ofcontemporarywriterswhosework engages the life and landscape in the American West, NorthernLightswW be valuable and interesting to scholars and general readers alike. MICHAEL BRANCH University ofNevada—Reno Cattle, Horses, Sky, and Grass: CowboyPoetry oftheLate Twentieth Century. Edited by Warren Miller. (Flagstaff: Northland Publishing, 1994. 212 pages, $14.95.) Cowboypoetryhas been called everythingfrom the most important literary movement in the country...