SOURCE: "A Dynamic First Effort That Proves to Be the Real Thing," in Los Angeles Times, August 4, 1994, p. E7.

[Dorris is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and critic. In the following review, he remarks favorably on The Grass Dancer.]

The Grass Dancer is a look through an inverted telescope Susan Power

into the rich tapestry of Dakota society. Moving a century backward from the early 1980s and reclosing the loop in the present, its series of related, beautifully told tales unravel the intricate stitch of related lives, the far-reaching consequences of chance acts, the lasting legacies of love and jealousy.

Susan Power, an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, has written a first novel that hums with serious intention and reads like a sad and lovely lament. The high plains reservation setting is rendered with the kind of authentic realism—the little but crucial...