Ceremony
Leslie Marmon Silko (1977)
“A Laguna Pueblo veteran returns from WWII shattered — and only the stories his people have always told can put him back together.”
Short Summary
Tayo, a half-white Laguna Pueblo man, returns from World War II with crippling PTSD, guilt over his cousin Rocky's death, and a profound spiritual disconnection from himself and his people. Haunted by combat trauma and torn between two worlds, he is guided through an ancient healing ceremony by the mixed-blood medicine man Betonie, whose ceremony draws on both Pueblo tradition and contemporary realities. As Tayo performs the ceremony — literally tracking a herd of stolen cattle across a drought-stricken landscape — he confronts the witchery that drives destruction, reconnects with the land and community, and achieves a wholeness neither the VA hospital nor mainstream America could offer him.
Detailed Summary
Tayo is the son of a Laguna Pueblo woman and an unknown white man. Raised by his Aunt Thelma after his mother abandoned him, he grows up on the margins — not fully accepted by his aunt, never fully white, always 'half-breed' in a community that values bloodlines. He and his cousin Rocky, Thelma's bi...