It is a search and a celebration, a book of identities and sources....Out of ordinary materials—genealogy, tribal tales, memories of a boyhood spent in Oklahoma, at Ship Rock in the Navajo country and at the Jemez pueblo, where his parents taught school—he has built a mystical, provocative book.
Wallace Stegner, New York Times
A Native American version of 'Roots' . . . full of the sense of wonder that characterizes classic American literature.
Choice
Graceful, lucid prose...[Momaday] is forever an Indian and the reader understands why.
Atlantic Monthly
With the eye of a painter and the voice of a poet, Momaday vividly recreates a childhood world of color, sound, and experience played out against the backdrop of tribal tales and in the shadow of revered forebears. . . . An eloquent statement of this distinguished Native American author's search for identity.
Journal of Arizona History