Genre: Book
Grade: B+
Notable People: Michael Dorris
Title: A Yellow Raft in Blue Water
Review: Picked up this book at a library sale because I liked the title (astute reasoning, I know). Dorris, the late husband of writer Louise Erdrich, and a professor of Indian studies at Dartmouth wrote his one and only novel in 1987- a fierce saga of three generations of Indian women, beset by hardships and torn by angry secrets, yet joined by the bonds of kinship. Starting in the present day and moving backward, the novel is told in the voices of the three women: fifteen-year-old part-black Rayona; her erratic and dying American Indian mother, Christine; and the fierce and mysterious aunt Ida, mother and grandmother whose haunting secrets, betrayals, and dreams echo through the years. The book took me a long time to respond to, and I almost quit it, but in the end, I thought it was compelling story and a taut look into the life of the modern Native American woman. Incredibly preserving group of women.