In her debut short story collection, Beth Piatote (Ethnic Studies) explores Native American life in the modern world. The stories find unifying themes in the strength of kinship, the pulse of longing, and the language of return: a woman teaches her niece to make a pair of beaded earrings while ruminating on a fractured relationship; in 1890, two young men at college — one French and the other Lakota — each contemplates a death in the family; a Nez Perce-Cayuse family is torn apart as they debate the fate of ancestral remains in a reimagining of the Greek tragedy Antigone. The Beadworkers (Counterpoint, 2019) draws on indigenous aesthetics and forms to offer a powerful and sustaining vision of Native life.

Piatote is joined by Kathleen Donegan (English).