SOURCE: A review of First Indian on the Moon, in Small Press, Vol. 12, No. 1, Winter, 1994, p. 86.

In the following review of First Indian on the Moon, Bruchac explores Alexie's evolution as a writer.

Few young writers have burst onto the scene with as much praise as Sherman Alexie. His first book, [I Would Steal Horses,] published in 1992, was called "wide-ranging and dexterous" with "an astonishing range of voice and emotion." First Indian on the Moon, his second volume of poems published by Hanging Loose Press, is further evidence that such praise was truly warranted.

In some ways, this book is more unified than his first, for it can almost be read as a cycle of poems—about Native loves and losses and fires—set against the backdrop of the Spokane Reservation. The double-edged theme of fire appears again and again in his pictures of an Indian family so...