Indian Affairs

More than two decades have passed since Woiwode exploded onto the literary scene with the novel What I'm Going to Do, I Think. Now, having written the distinguished novels Born Brothers and Beyond the Bedroom Wall , Woiwode has returned to his first novel's characters and setting in a sequel that matches the intensity of his early work while showing the finesse of his more recent books. It is seven years after the events of What I'm Going to Do , and Chris and Ellen are in her grandparents' cabin in northern Michigan. Chris is struggling to finish his dissertation on American poetry. But before he can come to terms with Roethke, Chris must reckon with his own identity. He seems conscious of his Native American heritage for the first time, but even as it starts to accrete significance for him, he blunders through a series of awkward encounters with local Native Americans, antagonizing a malevolent few. As in Woiwode's first novel, Chris (still armed with his .22) is the center of the fictional universe, while Ellen floats at the edges. A toughness, a brusqueness pervades the oblique forms of communication in Michigan's northern woods, and Woiwode has an uncanny ability to go from mystical transcendence to slapstick in the course of a page. Readers familiar with his work will be delighted with this novel, but it isn't a particularly good place to start reading Woiwode, as its pace and setting can become relentlessly claustrophobic for those not sufficiently initiated. (June)