SOURCE: "The Grandmother in the Moon," in The New York Times Book Review, August 21, 1994, p. 7.

[Thornton is an American novelist, educator, and critic. In the review below, he discusses Power's integration of past and present in The Grass Dancer.]

Near the beginning of The Grass Dancer, Susan Power's captivating first novel, an old medicine man tells his grandson to remember that there are "two kinds of grass dancing. There's the grass dancer who prepares the field for a powwow the old-time way, turning the grass over with his feet to flatten it down. Then there's the spiritual dancer, who wants to learn grass secrets by imitating it, moving his body with the wind." The second kind of dancing, both a complex art form and a resonant metaphor for the relationship between humans and nature, functions as the armature of this moving exploration of lives infused with the power...