Often when writers address serious social issues, their characters become more caricature than fully realized human beings. While there are several figures in this novel—Sheriff Quigley and Louis Leon come to mind—who are indeed less than fully realized and only one-dimensional, a number of characters are so deftly and completely drawn that they remain in the mind long after the book is closed. Principal among these are Archilde Leon (the hero of the novel), his father Max Leon, his mother Catharine Le Loup (Faithful Catharine), and Father Grepilloux. Several others are memorable, if one dimensional, including Moser, the desperate and befuddled merchantspeculator and Horace Parker, the Indian agent, a bureaucrat who wishes to be thought just.

McNickle's fiction includes a number of Native Americans, both men and women, young and old, who attempt in various ways to understand, resist, assimilate, and accommodate to what...