"A Yellow Raft on Blue Water", by Michael Dorris

OK, this is my debut as a book blogger. Don't worry - I don't read as voraciously as I did before the kids came along, so I won't burden the world with my pretentious English-major persona very often. I have a feeling that it's not easy to write about books in an interesting way.

But I know a good book when I read it, and this one rates very high. On my Damn-Good-Read scale, this one was a 7.5.

It's about a Native American grandmother, mother and daughter. It's about women, but I don't think I would pigeonhole it as a "chick book". Men of the world, you should read it. It is a family history told in reverse, starting with the granddaughter's experiences today and then backing in to the underlying circumstances that created her reality. This guarantees that important plot revelations are saved for the end of the story. Each character narrates her own story completely before the next character is introduced, so the book is divided into three sections: "Rayona", "Christine" and "Ida". By the time the grandmother's story begins, near the end of the book, I was feeling the suspense that drives the plot - I wanted so much to know why she is the way she is and had questions that only she could answer. Each women often describes the exact same moment from her own perspective, so you are able to see how each saw and interpreted something differently. One character will do something that seems completely irrational, until it's her turn to tell the story and suddenly it all makes sense.

Dorris is sparing with his prose (no big desriptive passages), but he's able to convey to perfection how it feels to drive for hours downs empty stretches on road or go to stay with people you barely know. And I like the way he doesn't tie up every single loose end in the story. There is still a lot going on that reaches beyond the conclusion of the book.

Quality writing: 7
Interesting characters: 9
Interesting plot structure: 10
Addictiveness (the un-put-down-ability factor): 6