Caught in the Rosary Beads Dream Catcher: Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie

If it wasn't in the mid-30s and snowing today, I'd go outside, walk to Capitol Park, measure General Philip Sheridan's short legs and then try to figure out some way to make it look like I shot his horse between the eyes -- as reparations.

Yes, like Sheridan, I was born in Albany, but our schools certainly did not stress his scorched earth tactics in the Shenandoah Valley or his post-Civil War involvement in the Indian Wars, particularly his slaughter of the buffalo. Sherman Alexie introduces his readers to Sheridan under the reincarnated guise of a talent scout at Cavalry Records. Sheridan's partner is George Wright, and Alexie hints at his similar atrocities, making them more and more clear to a reader unfamiliar with his part in the Yakima War as the story evolves, with him ultimately hailing a cab outside the recording studio in NYC and being driven to his 1865 grave on the west coast.

But I'm focusing exclusively on only one of the many intricately interwoven subplots in Reservation Blues. Alexie begins with Southern blues legend Robert Johnson at the crossroads of Wellpinit on the Spokane reservation, giving away his devil-possessed guitar to Thomas Builds-the-Fire. Thomas, passing it along to Victor Joseph, and, who, with Junior Polatkin, forms the band Coyote Spring. Johnson moves up the mountain to Big Mom, the woman he has sought for years, who is not only a larger than life earth mother figure, but also with her own guitar made out of a '65 Malibu and the blood of a child killed in 1890 at Wounded Knee, taught music to everyone from Benny Goodman to Jimi Hendrix.

While touring bars and finding their voice, the band switches between two back-up vocal groups, sisters Chess and Checkers Warm Water of the Flat Head tribe, and white groupies Betty and Veronica. While these women illustrate the allure and repulsion between the sexes and the races, they are portrayed with much more complexity and reality than their names would imply.

Alexie also brings into the story the effect of missionaries on the beliefs and customs of the tribe. But unlike Louise Erdrich's The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, Alexie has the Catholic believers sincere, the doubters respectful, and the conflicted priest responsible for winning the first basketball game in tribal history against the Assembly of God team.

As these examples suggest, the story sparkles with wit and beautiful turn of phrase. The insult of TEFAP surplus commodity food, cheap HUD building construction, and the benign neglect of the Bureau of Indian Affairs are all depicted with a satiric distance that better engages the reader than the heavy-handed mockery in The Last Report.

The plot builds not only on Thomas' stories but on the dreams and nightmares of the band members. Alexie is a poet first, and he uses Coyote Spring song lyrics to introduce each chapter. He builds in cultural refrains throughout the novel, pitting an existential "the horses screamed" against the pop inquiry "who's the lead singer."

Reservation Blues hits all the high points the Slackers are looking for in our tour of the States. The reservation in Washington is described using the word "gone" ... but it still has an in the blood attraction. National, family, and tribal history makes Wellpinit infinite: a reader sees it, but even more so, hears it's siren song.