Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two by Joseph Bruchac

 genre: historical fiction

Ned Begay's life as a Navajo is woven with a love of the earth, with a passion for familial relationships and a deep knowledge of his history's people and culture.  When, as a 16 year old, he learns that there is a special role that Navajos can play in the war beginning to rage in Europe and the Pacific, he chooses to join up to protect a land that has NOT ever made his people's interests a priority.  Ned is enrolled in code talker school - a program where native Navajo speakers create a code that allows them to talk to each other over radio waves that the Japanese can hear - but can never understand.  The role these "code talkers" play, Ned's experiences in the Pacific War, these are at the crux of this novel but Ned's love of his traditions, his joy in his sacred language, this play an important part too.

While a bit dry sometimes, I actually really enjoyed this quick moving story.  I appreciated that we meet Ned when he is a young boy, forced to actually give up his language in an (horrible) Indian Boarding School, which of course he defies.  I love Ned's connection to his culture and history and how it follows him to the Pacific and sustains him.  I really came to appreciate the vital role this Navajos played - and the significant risk they put themselves in as well as how little our government did to show its thanks.  The more you learn about Native American Indian/US Government relations, the more I am disgusted by my country's history.  There are important lessons here,  taught in a readable novel.  Glad I read it.