Search - Ceremony

Great book. Very interesting look at modern Native Americans, looking espescially of the effects on the psychy after WWII.

Tayo, a young American Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during WWII, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive only increases his feelings of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy refuge in alcohol and senseless violence, Tayo searches for another kind of comfort and resolution. Tayo's quest leads him back to the Indian past and its traditions, to the beliefs about witchcraft and evil, and to the ancient stories of his people. The search itself becomes a ritual, a curative ceremony that defeats the most virulent of afflictions, despair.

Told in the tradition of story-telling, this novel is an account of a World War II veteran's return home to the Laguna Pueblo reserve in New Mexico. He has post-traumatic shock disorder and anxiety and he turns to traditional healing against the orders of his Euro-American doctors. Spots are wordy, which leads to a certain fuzziness. For me, paragraphs at a time of magical realism had little or no focus. But overall it's a positive story about the return to life of a guilt-ridden vet, who has issues that pre-date the war, the Bataan Death March, and captivity in a POW camp. The overarching message is that Native culture is still alive, growing, changing, so much so that it can save people from the past (and alcohol) and restore them.

I loved this book when I first read it and have kept it for many years. I read this during my "Don Juan" period and while not quite as mystical, it was a very interesting book.

A young Native American soldier returns home after WWII, but cannot leave the terrors of war behind him as he struggles to survive in a world out of balance.