If you're looking for something a little different, Reservation Blues offers a spiritual and exciting glimpse into Native American life. It depicts the rise and fall of Coyote Springs, a blues band from the Spokane Reservation, in their quest for fame.

The band forms when the unlikely trio of Thomas Builds-the-Fire and Victor and Junior, two men who have bullied Thomas for years, receive a possessed guitar and begin to play at local bars. After some time, they receive wider fame, traveling to Seattle and New York, but are forced to relinquish pieces of their culture as they assimilate into white society. Sherman Alexie challenges the authenticity of cultural interchange, arguing that to fully understand a culture, one must experience every aspect of it.

Many non-Native characters are introduced to reservation life through the course of the novel. Some are repulsed, but others are able to understand the struggles of Native Americans and fall in love with their responses to strife. Betty and Veronica, symbols of New Age culture, initially believe that Native Americans have spiritual powers surpassing whites, but when they actually come to the reservation, they are unable to embrace its poverty and culture of alcoholism and depression. Their disillusionment prompts resentment, and they turn their backs on what they have learned, choosing instead to believe their fantasies. Robert Johnson, on the other hand, stumbles upon the reservation, finds it beautiful, and attempts to learn everything he can about it. In turn, the reservation embraces him.

Reservation Blues successfully depicts Native Americans' struggles to maintain their cultural identity in a white-dominated world. However, its unequal treatment of characters makes it difficult to understand its positive examples of intercultural understanding. That being said, every character is developed enough to support Alexie's argument, and the novel is interesting enough – with sardonic humor and a well-paced plot – to hold most readers' attention.