Shifting Stars

This vivid historical novel of 1840s Medicine Bow Indian Territory graphically depicts crosscultural stresses through several generations. Skye MacDonald is the 17-year-old daughter of Gregory, a bagpipe-playing, verse-reading highlander, and Breathcatcher, a Lakota woman. As Skye relies on her grandmother, Turtle Woman, to teach her the lessons and rituals of her native heritage, Lambert (In Search of Ancestors) attaches these colorful rites of passage to a plot that involves Gregory's lifelong rivalry with the sinister Oglala Lakota named Caws Like Magpie, who has never reconciled himself to the loss of Breathcatcher. By the end of the story, Turtle Woman must decide whether to demand a debt of blood from Caws; in the meantime, Lambert educates the reader in such Lakota traditions as tribal councils, ceremonial dances, burial practices, initiations and purifications. The mixture of Lakota words and expressions (listed in an glossary) and Scottish dialect sometimes make for heavy reading, but those looking for an historical romance infused with Indian lore and Western color will find this appealing. (June)