THE EDUCATION OF LITTLE TREE

A Cherokee boyhood of the 1930s remembered in generous, loving detail, from the author of the very dissimilar Josey Wales novels. Orphaned at five, Little Tree went to live with his grandparents in the mountains of Tennessee; he spent several years with them, seeing others only infrequently. From his grandmother he learned the habit of reading and acquired a feeling for words; from his grandfather, a resolute whiskey-maker, he acquired a reverence for the land and living things that lingers even in this narrative. Special events punctuate his story--a puzzling rebuff in town, being slickered out of 50¢, the gift of a yellow coat--and for a short time he is shuttled off to an intolerable orphanage by officious government people. But the times spent with his grandparents (particularly the wise, vigorous grandfather) and their reflections on musk bugs, hound dogs, and the birth of each day' form the core of an unbelievably rich young life. Only the integrity of that experience can explain the absence of bitterness and his complete self-reliance after their deaths several years later. A felicitous remembrance of a unique education.