Yellow Earth

Starred review from November 15, 2019
Once again the vicious cycle of invasion, conquest, exploitation, and decimation is enacted in the West as shale oil deposits are detected around the nearly moribund town of Yellow Earth, North Dakota, and the nearby Three Nations reservation. As in his previous exceptional historical saga, A Moment in the Sun (2011), filmmaker and writer Sayles animates a vibrant and complex cast of diverse individuals caught in an extraction boom driven by greed and hope. Harleigh, the Three Nations council chairman, claims to be securing oil profits for the reservation, but his alliance with a highly dubious front man suggests otherwise. As a swarm of men, trucks, and heavy equipment assault the earth, threaten the aquifer, pollute the air, and precipitate mayhem, local lives are upended, from the sheriff to intrepid teen girls, a savvy stripper, a bouncer, a casino dealer, a Mexican refugee, and wildlife biologist Leia, who is studying a now imperiled prairie dog colony. Sayles' alternating narrators propel a busy, engrossing, and purposeful plot steered by both suspenseful action and intricate emotion. Aligned with T. C. Boyle in his penetrating perception of our place in nature and Tom Wolfe in his rambunctious satire, Sayles is adept at vital detail, guided by a keen historical perspective, centered by an edgy sense of humor, and inspired by empathy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)