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By David Joseph Charpentier
University of Nebraska Press (2024)
302 pages
Review by Luri Owen
Who doesn’t love adventures fueled by Chips Ahoy and Mountain Dew? This memoir is full of stories about the author and his friend Maurice, who determined early in their friendship that without them their adventures were diminished.
Author David Joseph Charpentier began teaching at St. Labre Indian School in 1990 and Maurice, a boy on a bike who helped him move into his house, was one of the first people he met. By the end of the week, the two were fishing buddies, playing whiffle ball in the street, and climbing the ridges around Ashland, Montana. They made up games and contests. Dave taught Maurice to swim and ice skate. Maurice became a fixture in Dave’s daily life during his first four years at the school and this book chronicles their friendship, Dave’s deepening knowledge of the local families and tribal life, and his own growth as a recent college graduate still defining the professional space that would shape his life.
Charpentier writes skillfully about his camaraderie with his peers at the school in those early years, but the book revolves around the way that Maurice wound through every day there, dropping in without warning to say, “We should go fishing, huh, Dave?” or to tell an “us guys” story. When Dave heard his name in an “us guys” story, he knew that he was part of Maurice’s inner circle.
Since 1990, Charpentier has worked for St. Labre in a variety of roles. Toward the middle of the book, he defines his hopes for the Northern Cheyenne people—that they retain their ancestral lands and heritage for generations to come and that they, as individuals, are healthy in every aspect of their lives. He had these hopes for Maurice and did what he could to help Maurice grow into them. Young boys grow up and young men expand their dreams, so there were a few years while Dave was in graduate school that he and Maurice weren’t in daily contact. Maurice was not impressed when Dave returned to Ashland with both a new degree and a new wife. Soon, Maurice left to explore the wider world and found his way to Missouri.
What happened in Missouri was the impetus for Charpentier to write the book. He mentions that Maurice was not at home in Missouri, evidenced by the Missouri newspaper article in which the reporter assumes that the first word in Maurice’s family name is actually his middle name, which the reporter converts to an initial. Charpentier reaches into his memories to give readers a glimpse of two adventurers who, armed with snacks and fishing poles, teach each other to pay attention to life as it flies by.
Read the book to find out how the horses fit in.
Luri Owen is English faculty at Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute.
