Ghost Dance: A Play of Voices by Gladys Swan

Abstract

Reviews 161 being, a la the Arthurian legends, that the evil has been purged and now God will renew the land. It is little things like this, and the inclusion of a sub-plot involving the travails of a “good” priest, that, in conjunction with the weak dialogue, keeps TheDark Wayfrom being as good as it so easily could have been. GRANT SISK University ofNorth Texas TheHappy Man: A NovelofCaliforniaRanch Life. By Robert O. Easton. Foreword by Gerald Haslam. Introduction byJack Schaefer. (Santa Barbara: Capra Press, 1993. 222 pages, $12.95.) Since its publication in 1943, the reputation of Robert O. Easton’s The Happy Man: A NovelofCaliforniaRanch Lifehas grown quietly but steadily. Capra Press now marks its 50th anniversary with a third edition. In the 1977 second edition, Jack Schaefer hailed the book as having “a timeless quality.” More recently, it has won high praise from writers as diverse as Ross Macdonald (“An epic work, a masterpiece ofwestern literature”), Ursula Le Guin (“Haunting as the tule-fogs of the Delta”), and Jon Tuska (“One of the best novels of the American West”). Its claim to greatness lies essentially in its down-to-earth characters and artfully crafted tales. TheHappy Man is, asJack Schaefer observed, “a book with subtle overtones emerging out ofthe straightforward simplicity ofnarration,... with never an obtrusive flourish of explanation or sentiment or stylistic trick.” The ranch workers come alive in these pages. And in their follies, dreams, and strengths is found what is timeless and universal in humankind. FR. LEO A. HETZLER St.JohnFisher College Ghost Dance: A Play of Voices. By Gladys Swan. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. 251 pages, $24.95.) Set in the mining town of Chloride, New Mexico, Gladys Swan’s Ghost Dance:A Play ofVoicesexamines communal loss of hope. For western towns such as Chloride, the economic mainstays of cattle, timber, and mining are not what they once were. The cultivation of tourism, it seems, is the current economic corrective to becoming a ghost town. Chloride’s one call-to-beauty is Roselle More, hometown girl and aging movie star, who’s returning now for her first visit in decades to kick-off the town’s rebirth. In the early pages, Roselle walks the town’s nearly deserted streets, and disappears, so one suspects, into the already crowded canvas of “The Ghost Dance,”a legendary oil painting depicting the people and history of 162 WesternAmerican Literature Chloride. She is replaced by a young look-a-like, Joan Gallant. At tale’s end, Joan finds to her confusion that she has become Roselle More for keeps. Another long-ago resident back for a visit is “Bird” Peacock, late middle-aged, the sole surviving offspring of a once-wealthy Chloride pioneer family. Last time “Bird”was home he convinced the local downtown merchants that he had a money machine that converted singles into ten dollar bills. “Bird” is in love with Roselle, or so it seems. Vignettes or snapshots ofminor and supporting characters abound, includ­ ing the merchants of the dying downtown as a Greek chorus, of sorts. Other vividlydepicted characters include Roselle’shigh school drama coach, the town historian with the requisite addled memory, plus an assortment of Hollywood-types drawn to Chloride by Roselle’svisit. Influences of Latin America’s “magic realism” literary movement, Charles G. Finney’s Southwest tale, The Circus ofDr. Lao, and Joan Didion’s Hollywood tale, Play It As It Lays, all seem somehow present in this, Swan’s second novel (her first, the critically well-received Carnivalfor the Gods). Shakespeare’s Puck, Twain’s Tom Sawyer, and Indian America’s trickster-coyote are found in the “Bird”Peacock character. Scenes of the nineteenth century Indian wars, plus a Chloride-inspired playscript help close out the final chapters of this sometimes straightforward, other times complicated tale. An ambitious, off-beat novelwith a strong cerebral bent, Swan’s GhostDance challenges the reader to take a different look at the modern-day West. JAMES B. HEMESATH Adams State College Sign Languages. By James Hannah. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993. 168 pages, $19.95.) Sign Languages,James Hannah’s second book, is a collection of nine stories...