Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1999 Since the 1968 publication of N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn, a new generation of Native American storytellers has chosen writing over oral traditions. While their works have found an audience by observing many of the conventions of the mainstream novel, Native American written narrative has emerged as something distinct from the postmodern novel with which it is often compared. In Dreams of Fiery Stars, Catherine Rainwater examines the novels of writers such as Momaday, Linda Hogan, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gerald Vizenor, and Louise Erdrich and contends that the very act of writing narrative imposes constraints upon these authors that are foreign to Native American tradition. Their works amount to a break with—and a transformation of—American Indian storytelling. The book focuses on the agenda of social and cultural regeneration encoded in contemporary Native American narrative, and addresses key questions about how these works achieve their overtly stated political and revisionary aims. Rainwater explores the ways in which the writers "create" readers who understand the connection between storytelling and personal and social transformation; considers how contemporary Native American narrative rewrites Western notions of space and time; examines the existence of intertextual connections between Native American works; and looks at the vital role of Native American literature in mainstream society today.

Farris has the misfortune of being an elemental: born human but host to barely contained primal energies. He wants what any young person wants-the chance to live his own life. Yet the fiery forces within him make him a danger to those around him and a target for capture and study by the Science Guild. On the Lone Continent, humans thrive in their cities through the Guild's revolutionary technology while the forests are home to powerful wild magic. Farris must confront his fears-fear of capture, fear of the wild Fey in the woods, and above all, fear of his abilities-if he's to remain free.

The inhabitants of Thanet believe that once every five thousand years the Death-Bringer destroys their world in a torrent of fire in order to herald a new cycle of creation -- and the eve of destruction is almost upon them. Billions will die. To Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the USS Enterprise, the Death-Bringer appears to be nothing more than a rogue comet, and one that could easily be destroyed. But Picard's position is challenged when his Counsellor, the empath Deanna Troi, discovers that the comet is alive...