THE SHADOW OF THE CROOKED TREE

This linseywoolsey about a schoolteacher's first year in the Michigan Ottawa Indian country of 1900 is something of a hairshirt, even though its appointments seem accurate and its intentions are exposed with purposeful probity. Louisa Harmon comes there when she's just nineteen and her one-room schoolhouse takes care of not only eight grades but also Indian and white children. The Indians are hard to reach, but in time she finds ways; she also inaugurates new ideas (a library, the becks sent from her home) which meet with parental resistance. But when she gets a chance to move on and up, she finds she's really ""rooted'' with these youngsters and with Ben Crane, the native-born storekeeper... ""By gum,"" reading this book is like going to schoolit's instructive and disciplinary.