We Need to Dream

Here are the chiefsRed Cloud, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Spotted Tailmeeting to discuss a treaty that would reserve forever the Black Hills for Indian use. Six years after gold is discovered there, we meet the army: Generals Sherman, Sheridan, Crook, Terry; Colonels Custer and Miles. Pomerance, author of the play The Elephant Man, has fashioned a dramatic narrative in both prose and poetry of an infamous chapter in American history. He infuses a few modern touches, putting Custer on the Johnny Carson show and comparing a confrontation between Crazy Horse and Red Cloud to ""Dr. J. driving on Bill Russell.'' Shifting scenes move from Washington to the battlegrounds (Rosebud Creek, Little Bighorn) and back again. At the end, we see workmen blasting out the four presidential granite heads while an aged Indian emerges from a sweat lodgea characteristically telling image in this stunning evocation of Indian-white conflict. First serial to Harper's. (May)