NP: Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge

[Robert Mahnke]

I would like to recommend a completely unPynchon-like book, Vic
Glover's Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge, in the hope that I can persuade
one or two of you to pick it up -- it's wonderful, and deserves a
broader audience.  Glover is a Vietnam vet and former journalist who
lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.  The book is a
collection of short pieces about surviving life on the reservation,
which car accidents and diabetes are two of the main threats.  Glover
has a dry sense of humor, an appreciation of community, and an
understated spirituality.  I hesitate to say that the book is
affirming, because it sounds schmalzy, but there it is.

$9.95 from Amazon, and it's published by a small outfit in Tennessee,
so you may not find it elsewhere:

http://www.amazon.com/Keeping-Heart-Pine-Ridge-Commodity/dp/1570671656/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251320688&sr=8-1

If I haven't convinced you yet, you can read some of the pieces of the
book in the archives of Indian County Today:

"Armageddon didn't happen yet"
http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/28185469.html

"Windy day sweat"
http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/28218069.html

"Ceremonies, hospitals, and cemeteries"
http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/28218339.html

Know, though, that the whole is greater than the sum of the pieces.