On the Rez


Ian Frazier - 2000
    Crazy Horse, perhaps the greatest Indian war leader of the 1800s, and Black Elk, the holy man whose teachings achieved worldwide renown, were Oglala; in these typically perceptive pages, Frazier seeks out their descendants on Pine Ridge--a/k/a the rez--which is one of the poorest places in America today.Along with his longtime friend Le War Lance (whom he first wrote about in his 1989 bestseller, Great Plains) and other Oglala companions, Frazier fully explores the rez as they visit friends and relatives, go to pow-wows and rodeos and package stores, and tinker with a variety of falling-apart cars. He takes us inside the world of the Sioux as few writers ever have, writing with much wit, compassion, and imagination. In the career of SuAnne Big Crow, for example, the most admired Oglala basketball player of all time, who died in a car accident in 1992, Frazier finds a contemporary reemergence of the death-defying, public-spirited Sioux hero who fights with grace and glory to save her followers.On the Rez vividly portrays the survival, through toughness and humor, of a great people whose culture has helped to shape the American identity.

Marching to Valhalla: A Novel of Custer's Last Days


Michael Blake - 1996
    A wonderful merger of fact and fiction, Marching to Valhalla is soon to be a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt.

Fools Crow


James Welch - 1986
    The invasion of white society threatens to change their traditional way of life, and they must choose to fight or assimilate. The story is a powerful portrait of a fading way of life. The story culminates with the historic Marias Massacre of 1870, in which the U.S. Cavalry mistakenly killed a friendly band of Blackfeet, consisting mostly of non-combatants."A major contribution to Native American literature." -- Wallace Stegner.

American Indian Myths and Legends


Richard Erdoes - 1984
    From all across the continent come tales of creation and love, of heroes and war, of animals, tricksters, and the end of the world. Alfonso Ortiz, an eminent anthropologist, and Richard Erdoes, an artist and master storyteller, Indian voices in the best folkloric sources of the nineteenth century to make this the most comprehensive and authentic volume of American Indian myths available anywhere.With black-and-white drawings throughoutPart of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings


Zitkála-Šá - 2003
    Raised on a Sioux reservation, she was educated at boarding schools that enforced assimilation and was witness to major events in white-Indian relations in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Tapping her troubled personal history, Zitkala-Sa created stories that illuminate the tragedy and complexity of the American Indian experience. In evocative prose laced with political savvy, she forces new thinking about the perceptions, assumptions, and customs of both Sioux and white cultures and raises issues of assimilation, identity, and race relations that remain compelling today.

Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story


LeAnne Howe - 2007
    The story focuses on an Indian baseball team but brings a new understanding of the term "America's favorite pastime." For tribes in Indian Territory, baseball was an extension of a sport they'd been playing for centuries before their forced removal to Indian Territory.The story centers on the lives of Hope Little Leader, a Choctaw pitcher for the Miko Kings, and Ezol Day, a postal clerk in Indian Territory who travels forward in time to tell stories to our present-day narrator. With Day’s help, the narrator pulls us into Indian boarding schools, such as the historical Hampton Normal School for Blacks and Indians in Virginia, where the novel’s legendary love story between Justina Maurepas—a character modeled after an influential Black educator—and Hope Little Leader, begins.Though a lively and humorous work of fiction, the narrative draws heavily on LeAnne Howe’s careful historical research. She weaves original and fictive documents into the text, such as newspaper clippings, photographs, typewritten letters, and handwritten journal entries."LeAnne Howe's Miko Kings is an incredible act of recovery: baseball, a sport jealously guarded by mainstream Anglo culture, is also rooted in Native American history and territory...[Howe's] compelling stories and narratives...expose the political games of the 20th century that Native Americans learned to play for resistance and survival."—Rigoberto González, author (So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water Until It Breaks and Butterfly Boy)

Indian Summer


Rosanne Bittner - 2015
    But her husband's increasingly cold and unfeeling ways trouble her, as does his disdain for the Cheyenne Indians his mission is to convert.His unwavering beliefs have left her questioning how she feels, and even their relationship. One chance encounter with Wild Horse, a gentle soul who the frontier soldiers have painted as savage, cements what she knows to be true: her husband, her neighbors, her community were all wrong. But will her secret encounters with Wild Horse set her free—or lead her into a world of sin?

Pregnant Mail Order Bride And Her Troubled Rancher (A Western Historical Romance Book) (Evergreen Frontier)


Florence Linnington - 2020
    

Waterlily


Ella Cara Deloria - 1988
    This novel of the Dakota Sioux written by Sioux ethnologist Deloria takes protagonist Waterlily through the everyday and the extraordinary events of a Sioux woman's life.

Follow the River


James Alexander Thom - 1981
    For months, she lived with them, unbroken, until she escaped, and followed a thousand mile trail to freedom--an extraordinary story of a pioneer woman who risked her life to return to her people.

Sacrifice and Reward


Robin Deeter - 2016
    By this time, most of the Kiowa bands have been pushed west by the Lakota, who are on the move southward from the Great Lakes region. These invaders from the north want the game-rich, lush pasture lands of the territory for themselves. However, one small Kiowa band is determined to remain in their early homelands in the region of what will be one day known as eastern South Dakota. These two enemy tribes are brought face-to-face through the vision of a young Kiowa medicine man. Sky Dancer, a beautiful, Kiowa widow, and proud Lakota warrior, Dark Horse, are forced to marry in order to create an alliance between their peoples. Right from the beginning they clash in a test of wills, loathing each other on sight, making a happy marriage seem out of the question. Will the sacrifice that is asked of them save their tribes? Can these two enemies overcome their initial hatred to find love in unlikely place or will distrust keep them from the reward they both crave?

Loyalties: A Novel of World War II


Thomas Fleming - 1994
     In Berlin, Berthe von Hoffman dreams of an angel in the depths, embracing her husband's submarine – and remembers Kristallnacht, when Hitler declared all-out war on the Jews. The stench of evil in that memory draws her to the headquarters of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, enigmatic head of the German secret service – and guiding spirit of the Schwarze Kapelle, the circle of courageous men and women who comprise the secret dangerous resistance to Nazism. Aboard the USS Spencer Lewis off Iceland, Lieutenant Commander Jonathan Trumbull Talbot is denouncing President Franklin D. Roosevelt's unconstitutional undeclared war against Germany when a torpedo fired by Berthe's husband, Kapitanleutnant Ernst von Hoffmann, cut the destroyer in half. Out of this conjunction grows a tormented tangle of love and jealousy and patriotic deceit when the three meet in Spain after Pearl Harbor has catapulted American into the war. By that time, Talbot's criticism of the president has wrecked both his naval career and his marriage to Annie Richman, daughter of a congressman whose power depends on FDR's political wizardry. When Talbot returns from Spain to urge negotiations with Canaris and other leaders of the German resistance, Annie, now a powerful journalist, becomes a player in the struggle for the mind of the intransigent, mortally ill president. At its gripping climax, Loyalties draws everyone into an anguished confrontation with the limits of patriotism and God's baffling role in the middle of human destiny. From murderous contests between rival intelligence agencies in Spain to the labyrinthine political machinations in Washington, London, and Berlin to warfare beneath the North Atlantic, Loyalties is a dazzling mosaic of men and women caught in the crossfire of history – yet finding in the midst of destruction and chaos inexplicable glimpse of meaning and hope.

The Captured


Scott Zesch - 2004
    Traded to Comaches, he thrived in the rough, nomadic existence, quickly becoming one of the tribe's fiercest warriors. Forcibly returned to his parents after three years, Korn never adjusted to life in white society. He spent his last years in a cave, all but forgotten by his family.That is, until Scott Zesch stumbled over his own great-great-great uncle's grave. Determined to understand how such a "good boy" could have become "Indianized" so completely, Zesch travels across the west, digging through archives, speaking with Comanche elders, and tracking eight other child captives from the region with hauntingly similar experiences. With a historian's rigor and a novelist's eye, Zesch paints a vivid portrait of life on the Texas frontier, offering a rare account of captivity.

A Man Named Cully:


Orris Slade - 2018
    Having worked both as a U.S. marshal and a bounty hunter he ruthlessly pursues villains who plague the West. The son of a clergyman, Cully has strayed from the faith but not from righteousness.As committed as Cully is to law and justice, shrewd and ruthless outlaw “Smiley” James lives a life of crime. With his hardened gang of killers he has created a horrific mail-order bride scam. Young women are lured from the East to become brides for ranchers or businessmen in the West. When they arrive they are taken captive and forced to work in a profession that has nothing to do with wedding rings.James fancies himself as a rich businessman and is more than willing to kill anyone and everyone who gets in his way. Cully is hired to find a young mail-order bride from Philadelphia who has gone missing. The evidence leads to Smiley and his gang. Cully is outnumbered and out-gunned. This is not the first time he has faced long odds, and it may be the most dangerous and bloodiest hunt of his career.Note: Each book in the Cully the Bounty Hunter series is a standalone story that can be read out of order.

Stone Song: A Novel of the Life of Crazy Horse


Win Blevins - 1995
    Of all the iconic figures of Native American history, Crazy Horse remains the most enigmatic. To this day he strides across American history as a man who lived—and died—on his own terms. “’Stone Song’ is a deeply spiritual story about the soul journey of a great and mysterious American hero.” ~ The Dallas Morning News. Ridiculed as a boy for his white-man looks, he called for a vision, and received a great one . . . a vision that would shape his life. He was to fight for his people. In order to be successful, he must not accept traditional Lakota finery, rewards, and would sacrifice the dream of a wife and children. By following his vision, and his destiny of that as a mystic warrior, he was able to lead his people to their greatest victory—the defeat of General Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.Called to his monumental task, and tortured by his deeply passionate love of a woman, Crazy Horse found peace only in battle. Drawing inspiration from the eternal wisdom of his people, he discovered the means to defeat the U.S. Army at its own deadly game. Come enjoy this new 20th century Anniversary Edition with an intimate introduction by the author, Win Blevins.