[To] my mind nobody has drawn on an Indian mythology with more grace and power than the Laguna writer Leslie Silko…. [Even] a cursory survey in Boas Keresan Texts of the originmyth episodes as told by Laguna and other Keresan Pueblo people will reveal the skill and tact with which Silko establishes and maintains a mythic pre-text for [Ceremony], the fictional story of Tayo, the disturbed Indian veteran of World War II….

Silko is no hidebound traditionalist as an artist, certainly, but nearly every page of the novel reveals her loving dedication as a fiction writer to the task of rooting Tayo's story of personal sterility in the old Laguna stories of Nau'ts'ity'i and the regeneration of the world through the recovery of her goodwill. Indeed the whole book testifies to the author's commitment to the native idea of "story" as a metaphor for the mysterious going-on of...