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Not long before Janet Campbell Hale completed Bloodlines, she visited the Coeur d'Alene Reservation, her childhood home, after a thirty-six-year absence. She told a group of schoolchildren that being a tribal person was "something special" and "a source of strength" and that, in spite of the many social problems that plague reservations, "Things are better now." In contrast to this public pose, Hale then confides to the reader that tribal and family ties do not always provide solace. Her family, in particular, nearly destroyed her; the tribe seemed irrelevant.
Bloodlines, a series of autobiographical essays, consists of deceptively simple stories, conveyed in the sparest prose, wherein Hale reveals that her family and mixed-blood heritage primarily caused deep pain. At heart are essential issues of identity, a "dysfunctional...