In his first novel, poet Matlin ( Dressed in Protective Fashion ) explores with almost mystical intensity a clash of cultures. Tom Green, a Kiowa Indian whose parents fled the Depression-era Oklahoma dust storms, works on a rose-breeding farm in southern California, circa 1950. His employer and friends are hardy Jewish immigrants, many of whom speak fluent Russian, Hebrew and Spanish. As Tom encounters inner voices and makes contact with his tribe's ancestral spirits, he comes to understand and even identify with Jewish farmers whose relatives perished in the Nazi death camps. Tom's tender love affair with Hollywood actress Anna, the daughter of German-Jewish refugees, is not fully explored, nor does the novel's other principal female character--a proud woman of Aztec blood who feels choked by her husband's devotion to horticulture--come completely to life. But Matlin's introspective prose is haunting, evoking the Southwest as a vortex within which whirl atomic bomb tests, B-52 overflights, Tennessee Ernie Ford's crooning, Senator Joseph McCarthy, ecological consciousness, Jewish pioneering dreams and Native American visions. ( May )
Poet Matlin's lyrically written meditation on the California desert, interwoven with hallucinatory Native American folktales, ultimately fails as a novel. Tom Green is a Kiowa Indian working for an unnamed Jewish rose farmer in southern California shortly after World War II. Having fled the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, Tom is obsessed with water, applying his skills and Indian magic to irrigating the precious roses. Thoughts swirl through his mind, revolving from ancient earthquakes and glaciers to the continuing sonic booms from atomic bomb tests, the local Jewish community, and the rose farmer's Hollywood friends. Actress Anna and her pet monkey, Nadine, eventually capture Tom's attention, but unfortunately the reader's interest is never fully engaged. With sketchy characters, minimal dialog, and no plot, the sometimes unintelligible narrative seems endless. Not recommended.-- Patricia Ross, Westerville P.L., Ohio
