TURTLE MEAT AND OTHER STORIES by Joseph...

TURTLE MEAT AND OTHER STORIES by Joseph Bruchac (Holy Cow! Press: $10.95; 115 pp., paperback original). As the author has toured widely telling Northeastern Amerindian stories and has collected several volumes of them, it’s hardly surprising his original fiction echoes these tales. Many of his brief stories focus on conflicts between Native Americans and Caucasians. “Wolves” depicts the struggle between men who want to conquer the Earth and people who want to live in harmony with it; a clash with a bootlegger becomes a metaphor for the destruction of Amerindian culture by alcohol in “All Dishonest Men.” Bruchac’s skillfully wrought prose evokes “the magic of an age when everything in the natural world was known to have a voice and when some men and women could hear those voices--if not speak and understand them,” and offers satisfying reading for a rainy winter night.