Reviews 67 Gone the Dreams and Dancing isan interesting, sensitive treatment of an important episode in history. Still, if one wants to read Jones at his most exciting, one should turn to The Barefoot BrigadeorA Creek Called Wounded Knee (1978). One should read thismost recent novel slowlyand thoughtfully. In spite of Morgan’s occasional wordiness, this novel displays a mature talent worthy of careful consideration. RICHARD TUERK East Texas State University When the Wind isin the South and OtherStories. ByO. E. Rolvaag. Selected and translated by Solveig Zempel. (Sioux Falls: Center for Western Studies, 1984. 88 pages, $12.95.) A collection of short stories previously unpublished in English transla tion, When the Wind is in the South and Other Stories is a treat for Rolvaag scholars and, indeed, for any reader interested in the midwestern pioneering experience, in Norwegian-American literature, or in the oral folk tradition. Solveig Zempel, Rolvaag’s granddaughter who selected and translated the stories, includes a pithy introduction discussingRolvaag’slife and majorworks and emphasizing his commitment to his Norwegian heritage. Zempel’s dis cussion of the stories themselves is particularly perceptive, suggesting connec tions between the selected stories and the style, characters, and themes in Rolvaag’s novels. The first two stories in the collection are in the oral style of the folk tale. In the title story “When the Wind is in the South,” Rolvaag assumes the persona of the third of three fishermen, that of a comic “fool” who begins unsuccessfully by landing a turtle but who concludes in a princely manner by catching a whole school of crappies. Both the character and the fairy tale luck of the narrator remind the reader of Per Hansa in Giantsin the Earth. “Whitebear and Graybear: An Indian Legend” tells of Whitebears who desert their icefloesin the seato minglewith landlocked Graybearsin awildernessofsweet honey and rivers of fish. This allegorical tale objectifies one of Rolvaag’s major themes, for by intermingling with the Graybears and adopting their materialistic values, the Whitebears lose their identity just as Rolvaag feared the Norwegian immigrants would lose their cultural identity in the American wilderness. Specific characters and incidents in “Mulla’s Heart Attack” and “The Christmas Offering” suggest those in Pure Gold, but Ole Troen and Mali, the couple in the first story, are saved from the extremes of the Houglums in Pure Gold by the fact that they have a daughter, Malla. Large, masculine, and unmarried at age thirty-four, Malla is a source of both humor and pathos when a visiting car salesman tricks her by proposing to her and then deserting her. In “The Christmas Offering,” Simeon and Anna Katrina, like the greedy Houglums, have sold their farm and moved to town, but unlike Lars Houglum, Simeon is malicious as well as miserly, refusing to give Anna Katrina money 68 Western American Literature for the Christmas offering as much from spite as from frugality. Through their strength and determination, however, both Malla and Anna Katrina achieve dignity and victory. Though its sentimentalism makes it the weakest story in the collection, “The Boy Who Had No Jackknife,” reminiscent of Crane’s Whilomville stories, shows R.0lvaag’s ability to portray a child’s mind, as he will later do much more effectively in Peder Victorious; and “The Butter War in Green field” foreshadows the warring factions of the church as referred to in The Third Life of Per Smevik, Peder Victorious, and Their Fathers’ God. The inclusion of more exact dates for the composition of the individual stories—if these dates were available from manuscripts—would have been helpful to Rolvaag scholars (the jacket listsdates for the entire group ofstories as 1910-20s). However, the collection is a wonderful contribution to western American literature in general and to Rolvaag studies in particular. We can only hope that in the future Professor Zempel will translate and publish addi tional untranslated Rolvaag materials, including his second novel, Paa Glemte Veie (On Forgotten Paths), thus making them available to the growing number of Rolvaag students and scholars who do not read Norwegian. ANN MOSELEY East Texas State University Jubal Sackett. By Louis L’Amour. (New York: Bantam Books, 1985. 375 pages, $16.95...