Choteau Creek: A Sioux Reminiscence

This compelling memoir covers the author's formative years (1948-1956) on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, where he lived with his dollar-poor but spirit-rich maternal grandparents in a small brown house on Choteau Creek. The product of a broken home, Dudley, now a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina, elevates his elderly grandparents, especially ``grandma'' Bessie Bourissau, to saintly status as they impart to him their beliefs, loves and fears. His strong sense of home and of his own spiritual awakening are striking as he describes a church service, a brother's homecoming, winter hardships, grandma's storytelling, chores around the house, medicine men and, finally, the inevitable illness, decline and death of his grandparents. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)