GANADO RED

Lowell collects a novella and eight short stories, primarily set in various eras of the American Southwest.

In “The Kill,” a Montanan’s choice of college is on the other side of the country, in Princeton, New Jersey, but he doesn’t stray far from his roots; he even keeps a hunting rifle under his bed, and his ways seem to fascinate his English professor. However, for the most part, a theme of shared experience threads through Lowell’s book. In “Lavinia Peace,” wife and mother Lynn has spent her life in the Western United States, unlike her single, free-spirited sister, Catherine. But the two share, via photos and letters, memories of their great-grandmother and her great love, George. Similarly, the titular novella follows myriad characters through decades in Arizona and New Mexico, all connected by a rug that Adjiba Yazzie first weaves in 1920. It changes hands and homes several times until the 1980s, and its discernible blood-red color signifies a unity among people who otherwise have no blood relation. The author’s lyrical prose has a surreal quality; in “White Canyon,” for example, a young girl in the 1950s suffers a fall, and the scene abruptly transitions to 1980, when she’s living in Dallas with her husband and child. As an adult, she has headaches and seems to lose time, which may stem from radiation exposure when she was younger. But in all of Lowell’s tales, her prose ignites the senses, such as in the description of a woman weeping over a stove and hearing “tears dropping upon the hot metal with faint hisses.” Adjiba is described as enjoying working outside “under the broad blue sky” with the cottonwood trees’ “fresh light green against the cinnamon sand.” Scholes’ simple but distinctive black-and-white sketches preface each story as well as each of the novella’s five chapters.

Incisive, profound, and colorful tales.