Dawn Land
Bruchac, long lauded for his insightful and sensitive storytelling based on the histories and mythologies of Native Americans, here provides an engaging creation narrative. This is an account of Abenaki life as it might have been 10,000 years ago, in an era when myth and reality were twisted into nearly a single fiber. As depicted by Davis’ impressionist pencil work—including several passages that are wordless and others in which a language foreign to Young Hunter, the Abenaki hero, is rendered in non-roman signs—the landscapes and action of the tale tend toward the harsh; Bruchac’s characterizations, however, make the moments as well as the whole explicable and engaging. Daily life, blooming love, threats from both the cosmic Stone Giants and the beasts of the earth and those of humanity, and the invention of a technology that has altered the course of Native American history are unfolded with both reverence and energy. The storytelling and the format chosen as its vehicle prove eminently well suited to each other. This would be an excellent choice as high-school curriculum support in American history or comparative religion studies. --Francisca Goldsmith