WHAT THE HEART KNOWS

Veteran romancer Eagle (The Night Remembers, 1997, etc.) returns to her favorite subject, the trials of modern Native Americans, about which she is well-informed by virtue of marriage to a Lakota Sioux and 17 years of teaching on a North Dakota Indian reservation. Here, Eagle’s young heroine, schoolteacher Helen Ketterling, is impregnated by her Sioux lover. But the world beyond the Bad River Reservation rises alluringly to draw away Reese Blue Sky before he learns of his imminent fatherhood. Helen leaves too, and 13 years later, when a crisis on the reservation brings her back, she returns as a single parent. Tribal traditions have deteriorated with the rise of casino gambling, among other developments. When Reese, now disillusioned by the outside world, himself reappears, old fires ignite between him and Helen. Both are still single, but Helen decides not to reveal that Reese is her son’s father; since Reese’s disillusion has spread to include the reservation, Helen thinks he doesn’t need to know. Revelation must come, though, for what the heart knows can—t be denied. Eagle’s rich understanding of Indian lore lends an attractively exotic cast to an otherwise familiar love story.