Review: 'Calling for a Blanket Dance,' by Oscar Hokeah

Oscar Hokeah's accomplished debut, "Calling for a Blanket Dance," at first seems mired in tragedy as it follows the life of Ever Geimausaddle. Narrated by a dozen different characters, though, Hokeah's novel not only tells a story that is ultimately uplifting, but also immerses readers in Oklahoma's Kiowa, Cherokee and Mexican communities.

When Ever is only 6 months old, corrupt police officers brutalize and rob his father, Everardo, and mother, Turtle, while the family is traveling home from Mexico. Everardo's beating nearly kills him, and the money taken from the couple is a life-altering financial hit.

Troubles continue as Ever grows up. Whenever he sees his father's hands shaking and veins popping, Ever braces, knowing that Everardo "must have wanted to sling him into a wall, or take a thumb tack and stick it into his side." Still, when a social worker moves Ever, his sister Yolanda and Turtle to a battered women's shelter, Ever feels responsible for displacing his family.

In adolescence, Ever's life constantly edges derailment. He mimics his father's violence and gets expelled from school for breaking someone's nose. When he gets a job at a plant nursery, he falls in with a co-worker who brags about his years in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. The military and a quick marriage offer Ever a temporary escape, but he soon seeks a discharge to help his wife with her meth addiction.

Ever's story serves as a base for those of his extended family, and throughout, we see mistakes repeated across generations. When Yolanda becomes pregnant at 16, for example, Turtle initially feels powerless listening to Yolanda believe her boyfriend's lies and excuses. Turtle explains, "It made me ashamed, because her father had told me similar lies and empty promises."

Despite the tragedies that weigh on many of Hokeah's characters — imprisoned parents, alcoholism, drug abuse — "Calling for a Blanket Dance" builds to redemptive moments. Ever's grandfather, Vincent, finds himself "caught somewhere between guilt and self-hatred" when his late-stage cirrhosis is diagnosed, but he works to see if "a failed father" can "redeem himself with the heart of his grandchildren."

Turtle seeks to repair the divide splitting her and Yolanda when the baby is born, and Ever's own story demonstrates a quiet heroism as he struggles to move beyond his past.

Comparisons to Tommy Orange's "There There" are inevitable, particularly with the similarity of the two engaging Native writers' method of splitting their debut novels among a choir of narrators. Orange's story, though, anchors itself in bold anger at colonial history and the marginalization of Native populations, and much of it is focused on urban Indians making connections to a past forcibly ripped away from them.

In "Calling for a Blanket Dance," the writing is just as powerful, yet the struggles are less existential. Ever and his family aren't looking for a way to define themselves within a larger national identity, but they are trying to pry their lives from the forces of generational trauma that shape their community.

Vikas Turakhia is an English teacher in Ohio.

Calling for a Blanket Dance

By: Oscar Hokeah.

Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 272 pages, $26.95.