The Moccasin Telegraph and Other Stories

Goodreads reviewer Paul Secor nails it in one line—
“Laughing – Sometimes laughing to keep from crying.”
That’s as fine a compass as you’ll find for navigating this collection of Silas Ermineskin tales. Life on the Cree Indian Reserve of Alberta, Canada, can wear a person down to the bone—hard winters, harder luck, and the quiet ache of dreams deferred. Yet in W.P. Kinsella’s hands, those same plains and backroads bloom with a sly, almost conspiratorial humor, the kind that sidles up beside sorrow and takes its arm so it won’t walk alone.
These stories hold the bite of cold wind on your face and the warmth of a kitchen table where the coffee’s been on since morning. Some will sting you with their truth, some will catch show more you grinning before you know it, and more than a few do both at once. They’re stitched through with Kinsella’s sure touch for character and his gift for finding joy in the places you least expect it.
The most resonating and unforgettable of the lot is “The Bottle Queen”. Silas’ little sister collects bottles to raise money to buy a fancy dress costume for dancing at pow-wows. She has the skills to become a champion dancer if only she can get one of those dresses. This bitter-sweet tale is worth the purchase of the book.
The funniest of the collection are “Where the Wild Things Are” and “The Queen’s Hat”.
In “Wild Things”, Silas and Frank take two rich businessmen on a wild-game hunt. The businessmen don’t know a thing about hunting. Neither do Silas and Frank.
“The Queen’s Hat” revolves around the visit of Prince Phillip to the Reserve to witness a buffalo hunt along the main street, thought up and coordinated by Frank and Silas. Of course, they get caught in a hilarious snag when they can only find one buffalo, an aged one on its last legs.
The saddest story in the collection is “Pius Blindman is Coming Home”. An old Indian woman is kept alive by the lie told to her by her daughter—her wayward son is coming home.
In the end, all 15 stories are keepers—funny, poignant, and alive with the kind of humanity you don’t soon forget. show less

I'm a fan of the baseball stories, but these Native-centric stories feel a little too mired in stereo-type for my taste. I'll stick to the baseball stuff.

2 bones!!

By the author of Field of Dreams, short stories set in a Canadian Reserve. Reserve is Canadian for Indian Reservation. Funny, sad, picaresque stories.

Humor, tragedy, wisdom - entertaining and enlightening.