Long Journey Home: Oral Histories of Contemporary Delaware Indians

Edited by James W. Brown & Rita T. Kohn; Indiana Press; $34.95

With every turn of each glossy page, the history of Indiana natives comes alive in the Long Journey Home: Oral Histories of Contemporary Delaware Indians. This book was written as a response to the collective surprise expressed by readers of a previous work that noted the Lenape (or Delaware as deemed by Euro-Americans) legacy in Indiana. Sectioned into four different eras, each contains the oral histories in first-person narratives, from the Delaware ancestors to their contemporaries. For those who detest a dry read, have no fear. This selection promises stories as colorful as the pages themselves, “a cross between actual history and the overlapping memory of the storyteller.” Perhaps many Hoosiers are unaware of this rich history, but this book serves to educate and “give voice to a people who have been overlooked.”