This week’s Newbery winner from 1932 has us returning to the States, but this time we’re in the southwest with Laura Adams Armer’s Waterless Mountain, the coming of age tale of a young Navaho (the 1930s spelling of Navajo) boy named Younger Brother. The story opens when Younger Brother is eight and first begins to study with Uncle to become a medicine man, learning to sing and tell the stories of his people while he tends his sheep. We follow Younger Brother as he grows and learns and as he makes a pilgrimage out of the arid Arizona desert by pony and train to the wide waters of the Pacific near Santa Barbara.
What I liked. Overall, I really loved the atmosphere of the story. The poems, the songs, the dialogue, and the descriptions all created a beautiful mood. This was by far the most complex and compelling depiction of native peoples in the Newberies so far. There were good and bad Navaho and good and bad pelicanos (whites), and even the villains were depicted with empathy and humanity. Also, I drove through the Mojave Desert as a child moving from California to Wisconsin, and have very early wonderful memories of the region.
What was interesting. I thought that the time period and the multiple cultural connections that Armer captures were some of the more compelling parts of the story. Through Younger Brother, we learn ancient creation myths, we marvel at the mysterious ancient Pueblo cliff dwellings, we make friends with The Big Man (the wise white trader who has learned the Navaho language), we help save a bold 15 year old archeologist’s son, we outsmart the feckless horse thief Cut Finger, and we travel to a Native American museum to give live cultural presentations on Navaho weavings. Armer really is able to capture how many overlapping worlds a young Navaho boy of the 1920s might have experienced.
What were some limitations. The main limitation is really just that it’s big and slow-moving, and while there are small adventures, recurring characters, and themes, there is not really a strong rising tension to climax toward a resolution arc in the book. So while I think that it’s the sort of book that would be compelling for a kid traveling in the area or doing a project on the area, the plot by itself might not keep the interest of your average 10 year old.
Why I think it’s a Newbery/Similarity to other Newbery winners. It reminded me a lot of Gay-Neck with its poetic mysticism, and Tales from the Silver Lands with its Native American folk tales, a bit of The Dark Frigate with its coming of age theme, and Smokey the Cow Horse, with its Arizona horse thief as the central villain.
What it teaches me as a writer. One of the reasons I liked Waterless Mountain so much more than Tales from the Silver Lands, is that Waterless Mountain really gave us a context for the folk tales. Throughout the whole book, Younger Brother learns and tells the stories of the Turquoise Woman and the Sun Bearer. Like a great backstory, this tale is woven in and out of the larger story when we need to learn of it, or something reminds the main character about it. I loved the Turquoise woman stories, but I think that if I had just read them all at once in a Folk Tale collection I wouldn’t have appreciated them the way that Younger Brother does, and I do as a reader. So I think as a writer it’s important to remember that myth and backstory are often most effectively woven slowly in and out of the larger narrative.
Have you read Waterless Mountain? What are your favorite tales of the South West and its people?
Just wanted to say again how much I’m enjoying this series. There are so many Newbery books I haven’t read. I love your thorough, thoughtful posts.