RAVENSHADOW

Visions continue to drive Blevins’s fiction, whether the focus is Crazy Horse (Stone Song, 1995) or, here, a Sioux disc jockey who travels the hard Indian road of depression and alcoholism before finding his roots in the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. Joseph Blue Crow, raised by his grandparents on the Pine Ridge Reservation to follow the traditional ways, has instead followed a career path to Seattle, lured by the dark promise of Delphine, a sharp black lawyer raised there by a prominent white family. When she commits suicide, Blue comes home despondent; his despair ultimately leads to reckless, suicidal behavior and the loss of his job as a local DJ. His closest friend saves him from self-destruction, and slowly he resumes the path originally intended for him by joining the centennial Big Foot Memorial Ride and taking a series of spirit journey that will transport him directly to the wintry moment when Big Foot’s people, among them Blue’s ancestors, are slaughtered by the US Army. A strong, thoughtful story of minority suppression within the dominant white culture, but Blue’s visions threaten to upstage his real-life struggle and lessen the story’s dramatic impact.