This book was wonderful even though it hurt. Or, to say it differently, this book could not have been wonderful if it had not hurt.
If you know something of how the US - both government and citizens - have treated the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, very little in this book will shock you even if it will appall you all over again. But it's Clarren's gift for weaving this story in with her own families story and making it a story of interconnection--not two things that happened simultaneously but two things that happened as a braided loaf--that make the book stand out.
And specifically the idea that all cultures have ideas of atonement and we ought to be looking to our own cultures for how to right these wrongs.
While it is true that indigenous ways of farming will likely be critical to our future survival, Clarren's story is just as much about being Jewish and hos the community of the future is not about becoming someone else, but about rising to meet the expectations that the best of our identity asks of us. It's not surprising that she holds the tension in this story between Israel as the Jewish promised land and the state as a national body that commits crimes against its inhabitants. Because it is, after all, the speaking of truth on the path towards repentance and a better future that animates every part of this story.
Also the idea of toveling in a frozen stream that had a hole chopped into it sounds AWFUL and I recognize that I am saying this as someone who gets cranky when she has to use a mikvah that has not been remodeled in the last 20 years.