Perma red. (Paperback Fiction).

EARLING, Debra Magpie. Perma red, a novel. Berkley. 308p. c2002. 0-425-19054-4. $13.00. SA

Debra Magpie Earling is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and her understanding of the world and the characters in this first novel runs blood-deep. Like other American authors, for instance Faulkner and Dorothy Allison, who write of unique geographical cultures they grew up in, Earling captures a sense of place and time from inside her world, drawing the reader to its center. Her descriptions of the West are of more than the physical place, but also of the mystical. cultural and traditional worlds that make up who Louise White Elk is.

Louise, a young girl growing up in the 1940s in Montana, lives in the small universe of her grandmother and her younger sister. As she grows older, Louise seeks love and three men compete in their own way to give it to her. Nothing is easy for Louise and only her strong will enables her to survive the poverty, depravity and tragedy that seem to dog her every step. On the outside. Louise is damaged goods, but Earling takes the reader way beyond the surface to the core of her being and her world.