Buy the Chief a Cadillac
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
In spare, honest, and picturesque language, Rick Steber sets this Spur Award-winning novel on the Klamath Indian reservation in 1961 just days before the tribe's "termination" by the U. S. government. Each tribal member received a $43,000 settlement from the government in return for the Klamath's 1-million acre reservation and the end of the Klamath's tribal status. Buy the Chief a Cadillac explores life on the reservation for three brothers—the alcoholism, violence, greed, and madness—brought on by the white man's treatment of the tribe, and each brother's response to the termination settlement. Creek, college-bound and disgusted with reservation life, wants to take his money and run toward success in the white man's world. Chief, who represents the worst of reservation life, plans to spend his money on a new Cadillac and as much booze as he can possibly drink. Pokey, keeper of the Klamath traditions, plans on refusing the government payout and staying on his people's land. The brothers' separate plans send them on course for a deadly collision when the government money finally arrives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1954, the U.S. government, under the Indian Termination Act, "incorporated" a great deal of Indian land on the Pacific coast and revoked the status of a number of tribes. Compensation came in 1961, in the form of $43,000 payments per tribe member. Spur Award winner Steber focuses, in his 27th novel, on how three Klamath brothers react to the loss and the money as they prepare to receive the latter. Rollin, called Chief, is the eldest brother; he's a violent alcoholic who puts the money straight into the bottle. Creek is a vulnerable college student who covets a red Corvette and can see little beyond that. Half-brother Pokey, who is half-white, doesn't want the money at all. As termination day nears, the liquor flows, and the local deputy sheriff gets nervous, especially after he discovers a hit list nailed to a bridge. The few whites who live on the reservation (including a vengeful storekeeper, a brutally opportunistic tavern owner and a redneck cattle rancher whose visiting daughter is writing a college paper about termination) don't help matters. There's no happy ending, just Steber's powerful, depressing portrayal of government duplicity and reservation poverty, alcoholism, anger and despair.
