SOURCE: Lemon, Lee. Review of Reservation Blues, by Sherman Alexie. Prairie Schooner 70, no. 1 (spring 1996): 185–86.

In the following excerpt, Lemon offers a positive assessment of Reservation Blues.

This is in part a catch-up review because some books that are too good to ignore were, for one reason or another, missed when they came out.

With three '90s novels by Louis Owens (one previously reviewed), works by Sherman Alexie, and Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water (also reviewed earlier), we may be witnessing the birth of a subgenre—Native North American Magic Realism. Like its southerly counterpart, the genre is fascinating both conceptually and because of the large talents of its practitioners. …

Alexie's Reservation Blues tells the story of a Native American country blues and rock band, Coyote Springs, that is formed after one of the reservation bullies receives a magic summons from the guitar of the legendary bluesman...