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Michael Dorris has crafted a fierce saga of three generations of Native American women, beset by hardships and torn by angry secrets, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of kinship.
Starting in the present day and moving backward, the novel is told in the voices of the three women: fifteen-year-old part-Black Rayona; her American Indian mother, Christine, consumed by tenderness and resentment toward those she loves; and the fierce and mysterious Ida, mother and grandmother whose haunting secrets, betrayals, and dreams echo through the years, braiding together the strands of the shared past.
"Dazzling." —San Francisco Chronicle
"Spellbinding." —Los Angeles Times
"Memorable...Marvelous." —The Washington Post Book World
This information about A Yellow Raft in Blue Water was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Michael Dorris' fiction includes A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, The Cloud Chamber, The Crown of Columbus, coauthored with Louise Erdrich, and the story collection Working Men. Among his nonfiction works are The Broken Cord, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a collection of essays, Paper Trail.
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