SOURCE: "A Literary Trickster," Maclean's, Vol. 106, No. 18, May 3, 1993, pp. 43, 45.

In the following, Turbide offers high praise for Green Grass, Running Water.

Last year, Thomas King wrote A Coyote Columbus Story, a sly tale for children about Coyote, a traditional Indian trickster figure, and a greedy Christopher Columbus. Coyote, who loves baseball, sings and dances the whole world into existence—and accidentally conjures up the explorer. Columbus is searching for gold, chocolate cake, computer games and music videos while his companion sailors covet "a four-dollar beaver," "a fifteen-dollar moose" and "a two-dollar turtle." When Columbus enslaves Coyote's native friends, she tries to undo the damage. In Green Grass, Running Water, King's second novel for adults, Coyote—and the anarchic spirit that it embodies—turns up again in small-town Alberta. Playful and droll, Green Grass is a sophisticated satire on relations between natives and whites. But it is the freshness...