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I've been hearing about this book for years, and meaning to get to it, and I'm also currently trying to get more knowledgeable about Indian/native issues in the U.S., so it was time and past time. Also, the book is set in my city; it's always a plus when you can picture the landmarks and yourself in them.

This multi-character novel of urban Indian life is stark, often painful, and extremely embodied. All of the characters are ambivalent about their relationships to being Indian, in a multitude of different ways. Orange does an especially good job of picking a wide range of viewpoint characters, who differ in age, in gender, in economic status (though no one is rich), in family history, and in personality style.

Inevitably in novels with this many separate protagonists, the characters begin coming together early (two are sisters, so together from their first appearances) and the connections continue and grow, rising to a crescendo in the novel's highly dramatic climax. Orange's sense of pacing is superb, carefully orchestrated to make the reader more and more nervous as the big moments come closer. And the climax itself is unflinching.

One of those novels that you don't exactly read "for pleasure," but for insight, for excitement, and in the end, for painful empathy.