WHERE THE TWO CAME TO THEIR FATHER:...

WHERE THE TWO CAME TO THEIR FATHER: A Navaho War Ceremonial Given by Jeff King by Maude Oakes and Joseph Campbell (Princeton/Bollingen: $14.95, illustrated). Oakes, who had befriended the aged Navaho medicine man, Jeff King, recorded some of his rituals and songs in 1942-43. “Where the Two Came to Their Father” blends part of a creation myth with the epic tale of heroic brothers on a quest to meet their Sun God-father. Alternately stirring and lovely, King’s cadenced prose is filled with details of life in the American Southwest that infuse an otherwise remote-seeming myth with a sense of immediacy. Oakes supplements the narrative with King’s dramatic, stylized illustrations, executed in corn meal, pollen and vegetable pigments. At a time when Southwestern tchotchkes have become an essential part of trendy decor, this elegant volume offers readers an older, truer vision of the region, when the moon was dressed in “white shell, pollen and rainbows.”