A thousand things could've gone wrong with a book like this, but none of them did. Nabokov's treatment of native spirituality is deeply understanding and sensitive. His telling of the history of these peoples and places –rooted in Western history as they must be in the same way the history of a hole in the ground is inextricably tied to the bulldozer that dug it– is even-handed, as disturbing as an honest assessment of this history can sometimes be for Westerners. A good, quick, thought-provoking read. ( )