Making the Ghost Dance

David Kranes has created a beautiful novel that hovers, dances, like a magician's handkerchief both in our world and suspended slightly above it. The life's tale of Peck from 11 to death at 94 carries us through many worlds, several deep loves and friendships, through family trials and joys, through birth and death, with wit and quiet passionate appreciation of the complexity and the magic of the everyday, almost to the peace of God, which passeth understanding, as my old Book of Common Prayer said. There are many surprises in this unassuming novel, not least of which is that it exists so modestly when its gifts are so great. It will repay your attention many times over.

Oprah should pick this book; people need this sort of wonderful message. David Kranes is one of those quiet American Treasures we hear about, crafting unique and beautiful works over decades, leaving them to us for discovery like heirloom jewelry left in a drawer. Making the Ghost Dance is another of these exceptional works illuminating ordinary people with extraordinary abilities and in equally extraordinary circumstances. By "ordinary people," I mean people we recognize, not heroic stereotypes, not icons --- although they may become icons --- but people as we would wish ourselves to become; knowing, wise, struck with wonder, and above all, competent... all that we believe good in America. Here he presents Peck's life, a magician's life, and we get to share it as he entertains us as a magician should. Peck's life careens page to page swept along by Kranes' spendid language until it sweeps to its graceful, elegant end. The theme is our mortality, and the magic of our lives, not just Peck's, where he tells us, "What's supposed to happen, doesn't. What's not supposed to happen, does..." and somehow, through faith, humanism and joy, we accept that idea and see the truth in it. In our nation, at this time, read Making the Ghost Dance to see how to embrace the wonder of your own life, and give wonder to others. Read it for hope.

Making the Ghost Dance: In clear, clean, beautiful prose David Kranes slowly captured me into following a life as it unfolded; that of a man, a son, a magician, a father, a friend -- an everyman named Peck. At times I wondered if Kranes was playing with me, manipulating me, which only made what he wrote the more real. As I read the last pages I found tears come to my eyes. I knew I had gone as far as I could, as had the story.