SOURCE: A review of From the River's Edge, in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 238, No. 22, May 17, 1991, pp. 53-4.

In the following review, the critic favorably assesses From the River's Edge.

A trial concerning stolen cattle becomes the foil to the tragic relationship between Native Americans and later arrivals in Cook-Lynn's (The Power of Horses) spare, poignant novel. Soon after agreeing to press charges against a young white man for the theft, Sioux John Tatekeya finds himself and his tribe, the Dakotahs, on trial. Along with other South Dakota reservations dwellers, Tatekeya has been forced to relocate in order to make way for a new dam. Accordingly, the trial seems a sad continuation of the Dakotahs' troubled history. But when a relative testifies against him, Tatekeya feels that a line has been crossed: colonialism has finally cost his people their essential value, responsibility to family. Woven throughout the courtroom proceedings are...