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Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful use of the English language!
Review: No, no, no to the reviewer who wants this condensed down to 60 pages!! This book is beautifully written and gives the reader glimpses into three cultures: American, German, and Native American. To omit the backgrounds of the main characters would be similar to holding a skeleton in our hands.
The language is beautiful, the setting is raw and beautiful, the characters are bold and beautiful. I laughed, I wept, and I came away from the book remembering bits and pieces with gratitude. This was my first Kent Meyers book, but I will be reading more.
To those of you lucky people living near Sioux Falls, SD, I understand that Kent Meyers is one of the authors at this weekend's book festival.....how I wish I could attend.
Rating:
Summary: Moral complexities, adventure, and engaging characters . . .
Review: I loved this book. The author, who teaches at Black Hills State University, has written a story of people in the reservation and ranchland of central South Dakota that strikes far deeper than his previous, Minnesota-based short stories ("Light in the Crossing," which is terrific) and novel, "The River Warren." A slender plot-line for its 400+ pages, it glows with intensity at each turn, and while your desire to know what happens next presses you onward, you pause along with the author to reflect on the thoughts and feelings of the characters who are pulled into the flow of events that begins with the purchase of a horse and leads inevitably to the burning of a house.
There is humor, suspense, family drama, surprises, ironies of all kinds, a smoldering romance, conflicts, animosity, suspense, farce, triumphs and sorrows in Meyers' novel. And all is woven around a continuing meditation on moral complexity and finally the great difficulty of doing the right thing when there are deep emotions, conflicting points of view and only degrees of violence and loss to choose from.
The four young men at the center of this story, two Indians, a cowboy, and a German exchange student, each bears a legacy of history that pulls them together in the single effort to rescue three horses. Meyers makes them come to life vividly through action, thought, and dialogue. Around them is another dozen or so characters, just as carefully drawn and revealed through illuminating flashes of incident. And as in his other work, there is the continuing presence of the landscape and the seasons, as summer turns to autumn and snow-driven winter.
I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the West, richly detailed and engaging characters, and multi-layered narrative where ironic parallels multiply and fascinating ambiguities abound. Especially interesting is the characterization of the young cowboy, whose ancestry in American literature dates back to Owen Wister's Virginian. Here is that same set of values, courage, pure-heartedness, and self-containment, 100 years later, set in conflict with a cunning villain. It is moving to learn what has become of him.
Rating:
Summary: Worth reading
Review: I'd suggest (to the reviewer that complained of excessive writing), that they slow down and think about how the writing would sound if it were read aloud. Like Moby Dick, it's easy to get caught up in a great story about whaling, -and ignore the metaphor it is prized for.
This story's simple, good and evil, the difference between robbers and thieves, honor and knavery. Compellingly told, with interesting characters.
The writing craftmanship is expert. In my opinion the real value lies in the timeless philosophy essayed.
Rating:
Summary: Humaness over otherness
Review: The last book I read in 2004 is the best. This novel cuts to the quick of human interactions with each other and the world around. Recently,after having a discussion with a friend, I picked up the book to continue reading and the words I read directly related to the heart of the issue we were struggling with.
Read the words of a mother,Marie, about her son, Carson. "She knew he wouldn't tell her. No sense pursing it. If she had guesses, they would have to remain that way. Guesses and wonders-sometimes it seemed that was what her relationship with her son was. More wonder, perhaps, than guess. But both."
This is a story of the West, horses, love, friendship, alliances, loyalty, family, recognition of good, and stars.
"But Earl felt something shaping itself on this hillside, far different from anything suggested here, from anything written in the way the three of them stood. He looked at the Great Bear, its legs loping through half the heavens, and he wondered: If he and Willi and Carson were a constellation the Bear looked down upon, what would it form? What was it forming? And the horses, too?
But he didn't know, and it was too late if he did. Stories in points of light. If you looked at the skies in a Lakota way, you saw one set of stories, and if you looked at them in a European way, you saw another. Yet the stars were the same. And if you had no way to look , you saw nothing but stars. Nothing connected. Here they stood, the three of them, in their own constellations, but some new picture was being formed, was somehow already formed-if you had the way to look at it."
I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Had Promise, But Too Slow...
Review: This book has a great story underlying itself. Without spoiling it for you, the conflict of the horses and the dialogue among the character is intriguing, and at times, hilarious. Mr. Meyers truely captures certain Native American linguistics and charm. Unfortunately, he strays from the story and the dialogue FAR, FAR too often. The reader will be captivated by the action or the dialogue (or both) and then suddenly we will be forced to read about the history and culture of Native Americans (and also the Germans). Which is fine, but he places these excessively numerous bits of tedium throughout the novel in places they just don't belong. For the first time ever, I skipped paragraph over paragraph of useless rhetoric just to get to the next line of dialogue. Quite simply: Compress this book into 60 pages and you have a hell of a read.
Rating:
Summary: Love, theft, and Catharsis in the Rural Great Plains
Review: This novel is a beautifully written and contemplative work that thrusts four unlikely cohorts into the difficult situation of defying law and convention for a moral cause. All with unrelated troubles, the four protaganists manage to subtly come to their own resolutions through the complex act of stealing horses from an abusive owner-a neighbor that they all know or know of. This novel is at the same time humorous, sad, and reflective. Meyers brings alive even the most minor character in an American culture that is rarely written about and even more rarely visited. While I agree with the previous reviewer that the dialogue is compelling, I disagree with him that too much detail is given. In addition to being interesting in and of itself, the history of the bookish Native American and the German exchange student are vital to their characterization and to the understanding of their motivations. Having read other works by this author, I find him to be a unique voice of rural America.
Rating:
Summary: Love, theft, and Catharsis in the Rural Great Plains
Review: This novel is a beautifully written and contemplative work that thrusts four unlikely cohorts into the difficult situation of defying law and convention for a moral cause. All with unrelated troubles, the four protaganists manage to subtly come to their own resolutions through the complex act of stealing horses from an abusive owner-a neighbor that they all know or know of. This novel is at the same time humorous, sad, and reflective. Meyers brings alive even the most minor character in an American culture that is rarely written about and even more rarely visited. While I agree with the previous reviewer that the dialogue is compelling, I disagree with him that too much detail is given. In addition to being interesting in and of itself, the history of the bookish Native American and the German exchange student are vital to their characterization and to the understanding of their motivations. Having read other works by this author, I find him to be a unique voice of rural America.
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