SOURCE: A review of From the River's Edge, in Western American Literature, Vol. XXVII, No. 4, February, 1993, pp. 385-86.

In the favorable review of From the River's Edge, Kvernes comments on Cook-Lynn's ability to portray the Native American experience in the "white man's" world.

The spirit of a place, the Big Bend of the Missouri in central South Dakota, broods over … [From the River's Edge]. The river and its surrounding bluffs and bottomlands are an enduring presence, yet the damming of the river and the flooding of tribal lands epitomize the changes that a greedy and insensitive white society have forced on the Dakotah Indians who live there.

The Indians have been encouraged to take up ranching, and John Tatekeya, a Dakotah cattleman, has succeeded where many of his people have failed. When forty-two of his horned Herefords are stolen, he reluctantly seeks in the white man's court to...