Jacob Nashoba's journey has taken him from his Choctaw homeland in Mississippi to Vietnam and finally to a small reservation in the mountains of eastern Arizona. A tribal ranger, he lives among people far different from any he has known. Balanced precariously between isolation and community, he is drawn to both the fastness of a remote river canyon and the Apaches who have come to be the only family he has.Nashoba's world is peopled by, among others, a bright young man who sells vision quests to romantic tourists, a determined elder whose power makes her a force to be reckoned with on the reservation, a resident anthropologist more ""native"" than the natives, a corrupt tribal chairman, a former Hollywood extra who shouts at reservation women the scraps of Italian he learned from other ""Indian"" actors, and the ranger's estranged wife. Confusion and violence follow their encounter with a right-wing militia group training secretly on tribal land. The contrast between these Rambo types and the various Native American characters typifies the sardonic humor running throughout this novel of contemporary Indian identity.
- ISBN10 0806172029
- ISBN13 9780806172026
- Publish Date December 1999 (first published 1 March 1999)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Oklahoma Press
- Format eBook
- Language English