Ghost Dances: Proving Up on the Great Plains [Hardcover]

Growing up in South Dakota, Josh Garrett-Davis knew he would leave. But as a young adult, he kept going back -- in dreams and reality and by way of books. With this beautifully written narrative about a seemingly empty but actually rich and complex place, he has reclaimed his childhood, his unusual family, and the Great Plains.

Among the subjects and people that bring his Midwestern Plains to life are the destruction and resurgence of the American bison; Native American Ghost Dancers, who attempted to ward off destruction by supernatural means; the political allegory to be found inThe Wonderful Wizard of Oz; and current attempts by ecologists to rewild the Plains, complete with cheetahs.

Garrett-Davis infuses the narrative with stories of his family as well -- including his great-great-grandparents' twenty-year sojourn in Nebraska as homesteaders and his progressive Methodist cousin Ruth, a missionary in China ousted by Mao's revolution.Ghost Dancesis a fluid combination of memoir and history and reportage that reminds us our roots matter.WithGhost Dances, Josh Garrett-Davis bursts on the literary scene like a fresh, punk-voiced Wallace Stegner, weaving the story of his own coming of age into the tangled history of the Great Plains. A familiar prairie past of sod houses and populists lives here alongside a modern landscape of broken families and alienated teenagers, Christian fundamentalists and Indian activists. Histories of failure and destruction weigh down the present and mute the possibilities for the future. But the Great Plains emerge here as a place of terrible beauty, explosive possibilities, and that most American of emotions - hope.Martha A. Sandweiss, author of Passing StrangeGhost Dancesis beautifully open-spirited. Its ambition nevel)