The dead arise from their sleep in the cemetery of a small Midwestern town to tell their individual stories about an entire community caught in a web of scandal, sin, and vice in the early twentieth century.

"Surveys the traditions of Native American elegiac expression over several centuries. Krupat covers a variety of oral performances of loss and renewal, including the Condolence Rites of the Iroquois and the memorial ceremony of the Tlingit people known as koo'eex, examining as well a number of Ghost Dance songs, which have been reinterpreted in culturally specific ways by many different tribal nations. Krupat treats elegiac "farewell" speeches of...