SOURCE: "Dad Was with the Rodeo," in The New York Times, September 23, 1990, p. 29.

Butler is an American novelist, short story writer, and poet. In the review below, he provides a favorable assessment of Medicine River.

We may presume that Thomas King, who is Cherokee, Greek and German and teaches American studies at the University of Minnesota, knows his territory. His first novel, Medicine River, is a nice book, in the older sense of the word "nice": economical, precise, and elegant.

Medicine River would appear to be a charming and low-key tale, dependent for its effects on the reader's gradually building affection for a set of engaging if generally diffident main characters.

Will, the narrator, is half Blackfoot and a photographer in Medicine River, a small town on the edge of a Blackfoot reserve in Alberta, Canada. He is one of two sons of a spirited Blackfoot woman and...