If you claim to care about or have interest in Indian culture and you haven't read this series, you are lying. Put down that dusty copy of "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" and find out what's happening today.

This month, Bohjalian is joining us for the first time in several years. I've had this recommendation up for 2 years with the publisher's description, so it's nothing to do with his visit.

I don't want to seem like an author groupie or a literary suck-up, nor do I want to overstate the case. If I had a chance to use a time machine only once, I would return to the fall of 2006 when I read the ARC of "Double Bind" so that I could read it again for the first time.

In all seriousness, it only took this one book to make me a fan.

Let's let her speak for herself. It begins thusly:

"When I think of the farm, I think of mud. Limning my husband's fingernails and encrusting the children's knees and hair. Sucking at my feet like a greedy newborn on the breast. Marching in boot-shaped patches across the plank floors of the house. There was no defeating it. The mud coated everything. I dreamed in brown."

If that doesn't make you want to pick the book up, I have no hope for you. Jordan's beautiful prose continues throughout. Be prepared to go to some dark places, but also to be dazzled (yes, dazzled) by a debut as satisfying as it is stark.

Not sure why I couldn't stop crying when I finished this book. Because I'll never write one this good? Because of the beauty and ugliness of life reflected in its pages? Because my 93-year-old Tota just died and I never got to hear her story?

Sometimes, turning the last page of book, finishing a good story, is a quaint tragedy. This is one of those times.

Since this was published in '86, there are probably many reviews floating around out there with more insight and depth than I can offer.

I can't even convince my roommate to read this, and she's working her way through "1,001 Books to Read Before You Die" (Watchmen is #227).

It's also on Time's 100-Best novels. It won a Hugo.

Lines keep occurring to me. It's really, just a great story.

When a book interweaves a fantastic story that may-or-may-not-wink-wink have bearing on a second, real-world plot, one of two things usually happens. The lifeless reality the author creates serves only as filler for the fun, otherworldly stuff, and you find yourself bored, waiting for the portion of the book you actually enjoy to resume. Or when the two worlds meet (or "collide," as they often seem to do), the resolution is completely unsatisfying. Both plots in Jack O'Connell's fifth book are better than the other, and the resolution is downright masterful.

To articulate what this book meant to me (and my cousin, my mother, and my sister), I'd have to rip my heart from my chest, slice it down the middle, and invite you to review the contents.

Yes, it is that good.

A friend of mine recommended this in 2002. I'm only sorry it took Wallace's untimely death to spur me into finally picking it up.

His neuroses are ours. His observations are so brilliant that you'll love to hear his thoughts, whether on tennis or movies or luxury cruises. Enjoy this immediately.

One wanring, having a dictionary next to you won't cut it, not even a collegate one. Context will give you the gist, but keep a notepad handy. Later, look online for abbreviations and antiquated words the dictionary doesn't bother with.

Now, enjoy.