Bird Songs Don't Lie

In this deeply moving collection of short stories and essays, Gordon Lee Johnson (Cupe&ntilde;o/Cahuilla) cements his voice not only as a wry commentator on American Indian reservation life but also as a master of fiction writing. In Johnson&apos;s stories, all of which are set on the fictional San Ignacio reservation in Southern California, we meet unforgettable characters like Plato Pena, the Stanford-bound geek who reads Kahlil Gibran during intertribal softball games; hardboiled investigator Roddy Foo; and Etta, whose motto is &ldquo;early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise,&rdquo; as they face down circumstances by turns ordinary and devastating. From the noir-tinged mystery of &ldquo;Unholy Wine&rdquo; to the gripping intensity of &ldquo;Tukwut,&rdquo; Johnson effortlessly switches genre, perspective, and tense, vividly evoking people and places that are fictional but profoundly true to life. The nonfiction featured in <i>Bird Songs Don&apos;t Lie</i> is equally revelatory in its exploration of complex connections between past and present. Whether examining his own conflicted feelings toward the missions as a source of both cultural damage and identity, sharing advice for cooking for eight dozen cowboys and -girls, or recounting an influx of New Age seekers of enlightenment in the Pushcart-nominated &ldquo;100 White Women,&rdquo; Johnson plumbs the comedy, catastrophe, and beauty of his life on the Pala Reservation to thunderous effect.