Customer Reviews

Touching the Fire: Buffalo Dancers, the Sky Bundle, and Other Tales

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I reviewed this book for a magazine when it first appeared. I gave it an all thumbs and fingers up review. I've reread it several times since then and it only gets better. Roger Welsch has written something that goes to the very heart of Native American religion, and done so in a way that is neither dismissive nor sappy. He is bang-up, dead-on, exactly right in his approach. I've used this book in some of the university classes I teach. Once the students understand that we're progressing backward through time, they have no problems. It's especially helpful in providing a background for discussing the whole repatriation of objects issue.

If you're under fifty you don't remember Roger and "Postcards from Nebraska", little five minute gems broadcast on Charles Kuralt's "CBS Sunday Morning". You missed some classics. Don't miss this fine story-teller by passing up this read. Although this book has been classed as a "fiction" piece, I will personally assure you, and yes, I've talked to Roger about this as well, none of these stories are fiction....you'll just have to suspend your credulity about that. Call them "magical reality" or even whimsey if you like, but read, enjoy, and ponder all the possibilities, Roger knows what he's talking about and he does it with straight forward, no-frills-midwestern honesty. Don't know what that is? It's writing without the pretense of "style". This is a read you will treasure and perhaps pass on to someone you love and with whom you would like to share some magic.