Ceremony » (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Leslie Marmon Silko was born in Albuquerque in 1948 of mixed Laguna Pueblo, Mexican, and white ancestry. She grew up on the Laguna Pueblo Reservation. Her other books include Almanac of the Dead, Storyteller, and Gardens in the Dunes. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Grant.

Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy refuge in alcohol and senseless violence, Tayo searches for another kind of comfort and resolution.

Tayo's quest leads him back to the Indian past and its traditions, to beliefs about witchcraft and evil, and to the ancient stories of his people. The search itself becomes a ritual, a curative ceremny that defeats the most virulent of afflictions -- despair.