Deluge

Wild oats and wild rice lie at the heart of this surprising, lyrical first novel of Native American life. Narrated by Aja (short for A'jawac') Sharrett, a mixed-blood Chippewa and Swedish schoolteacher in Minneapolis, the story traces her family's tribulations and perseverance, from the train wreck her grandfather Peke survives in 1907 to Aja's legal activism in the late 1980s. At every stage, family history exerts its influence for decades, shaping the family's lives in a marginal world where the veil between past and present--and natural and supernatural--is unsettlingly thin, and where Wenebojo, the Chippewa trickster-god, bedevils both ancestors and descendants. Strong skillfully turns traditional myths into plot devices and commentaries on the novel's events. The great moral to these events is the resilience of family bonds: Peke nearly beats his brother to death in an effort to protect the brother's illegitimate daughter but then saves his life. Aja refuses to return to the reservation but in the end is drawn ineluctably home. Strong writes with an easy grace and subtle eye for the details of Native existence. Seamlessly combining scenes of beauty, violence, grimness and humor, this work will remind many of the writing of her fellow Chippewa Louise Erdrich. (Sept.) FYI: An ex-cosmetologist and rodeo clown, Strong is currently an active member of a Tonganoxie, Kans., drumming circle.