Ceremony

Ceremony is a novel by the American writer Leslie Marmon Silko, published by Viking Press in 1977. Silko is of Laguna Pueblo descent, and the book takes its shape from the oral traditions and ceremonial practices of the Pueblo and Navajo peoples.

Tayo is half Pueblo and half white, and he has come home from the Pacific in a state the army doctors call battle fatigue. He is haunted by his cousin Rocky, who died on the Bataan Death March, and by his uncle Josiah, who died while Tayo was away. He drinks with the other returned soldiers, Harley, Leroy, Pinkie and Emo, and listens to their anger at a war that used them and gave them nothing back. After trying to sleep his way through days at his family's place, Tayo is taken to the medicine man Ku'oosh by his grandmother.

Running beside his story is the old account of a drought sent to the Pueblo people as a punishment for listening to a practitioner of witchery, and of the journey Hummingbird and Green Bottle Fly must make to bring rain back to the world.