Geronimo's Ponies

This first winner of a proposed annual novella competition, cosponsored by Council Oak and the Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa, Okla., gracefully situates a classic theme--coming-of-age--in an unusual setting. During the Depression, a boy named David leaves his home on a Navajo reservation to travel with his uncle Eph through Texas. David admires Eph; adventurous and colorful, he is the only family member who was kind to his sister, David's mother, now dead. The opportunity to accompany Eph, who plans to use the journey to sell horses he and his partner have bought cheaply at auction, also provides the occasion for David's first meeting with his mother's kin. But David is to be disillusioned, as Eph engages in a series of petty deceptions--lying to the public about the value of his horses and presenting David with myths about his relatives. Both sympathetic and inconsiderate characters are drawn with equal wisdom. Meyers, a former editor of Fortune magazine, uses a confidently unadorned prose, successfully relying on his narrative to generate momentum. Novelist and short-fiction writer Jane Smiley ( The Age of Grief ) judged the contest. (May)