"A season in the life of a ballclub" books are staples on publishers' (and often bestseller) lists. Professional sports teams, college teams, even the Brave Dragons of the China Basketball Association have had moments in the book biz sun.
Michael Powell's "Canyon Dreams" is different. Yes, there are basketball games and practices described on its pages. But it's less a basketball book than a Native American "Fiddler on the Roof," a book about young people caught between tradition and bilagáanas, the world outside.
Problems on the Navajo Nation reservation in northern Arizona abound. Prejudice, alcohol and a lack of opportunity are the Navajos' Cossacks. Powell estimates one-third of the families living there don't have running water and electricity; there is a 45% unemployment rate.
Yet the Navajo find comfort in the community and the old ways, in a life surrounded by sacred mountains and stories of the different clans repeated for generations. Even those who leave are often pulled back by the ancient ways — which is kind of how this book began, 27 years ago.
Powell's wife, Evelyn, served two months as a midwife for Navajo Health Services. Michael spent the time wandering the reservation and finding comfort "in this achingly beautiful land and its people."
When they returned to the real world — or at least New York City — "Evelyn and I resisted surrendering our loose-jawed state of grace. We balked at returning to what was."
He called editors in the Southwest to see about jobs, not worried about pay as he once might have. "To accept and explore a nonmaterial word seemed a fine life's journey."
As it often does, though, materialism triumphed; the desire to return to Arizona faded. But a quarter of a century later, after surviving cancer, the reservation pulled him back, too. And this book was his return ticket.
