SOURCE: Goldman, Marlene, and Teresa Heffernan. Review of Green Grass, Running Water, by Thomas King. University of Toronto Quarterly 65, no. 1 (winter 1995): 3-4.

In the following excerpt, Goldman and Heffernan discuss King's playful presentation of the relations between Natives and non-Natives in Green Grass, Running Water.

Thomas King's novel Green Grass, Running Water (1993) also examines the conflict between Natives and non-Natives. Whereas Wiebe relies on a highly elaborate prose style to fashion the world of the Tetsot'ine, King's unembellished sentences playfully lead the reader through the looking-glass. On one side of the mirror are the familiar stories such as the biblical account of Genesis. But just when the reader feels comfortable, the Judeo-Christian story is deemed incorrect, and the four Indians—Robinson Crusoe, Ishmael, the Lone Ranger, and Hawkeye (geriatric escapees from a mental hospital, who act as a kind of chorus throughout the novel)—insist that they must...