THE YEAR OF SMALL SHADOW

by Evelyn Sibley Lampman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 18, 1971

Adventure turned nightmare turned triumph turned lesson -- a Rogue River Indian boy's year (1880) in an Oregon town. The pivotal interchange in which Dan'l Foster agrees to 'adopt' Small Shadow is critically ambiguous and the disingenuous manipulation of episodes and attitudes is unbecoming; but the story successfully projects the two-way dynamics of acculturation and respectfully rejects assimilation as the summum bonum at the end. ""Lew Youngbuck sent word that while he is gone, his sone will be your son,"" Chief Sam tells the kindly lawyer: Foster had defended him on charges of horse-stealing and Small Shadow's filial services are putatively proffered in payment; there is no call for payment -- but there is no home for Small Shadow on the reservation. Going on twelve and aiming to please, Small Shadow takes quick note of Evansdale's mores -- ""Whites were not all equal just because their skin color was the same"" -- and observes its main street: the ""strange place. . . called a newspaper"" where ""Once a week. . . a huge machine made black marks on white papers"" and the ""curious place in which a white man scraped the beards from other whites who were too lazy to do it for themselves."" All the whites are scandalized by the arrival of 'Shad' (short for Shadrack, they scripturally assume) and he hears them speak mysteriously of the ""contamination"" of Mrs. Hicks' boarding house; but that goodly woman makes the best of their worst and goads the Methodist ladies into circle-sewing for him, competitively (""to show those Baptists what we can turn out"") if not charitably. An opportune act of salvation on Shad's part eventually establishes him as Evansdale's hero; but his wise perception of the shallowness of the town's proprietary embrace establishes him as the book's hero -- returning to the reservation with his father, affirming himself as a Youngbuck and as an Indian. In spite of the shaky scaffolding, erect.

Pub Date: Aug. 18, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1971

Categories: FICTION