Motorcycles and Sweetgrass

Taylor’s Nanabush is an updated depiction of the trickster demigod figure that is common in North American Indigenous peoples’ mythologies. Taylor’s characterization of the mythical Nanabush contains the hallmarks of the trickster: He is a shapeshifter, changing names and eye colors—and, at the end of the novel, transforming from a blonde-haired, white man to an Indigenous one. Nanabush interacts with nature and all living things—though he is not always in control of the forces he contacts: He can call forth a thunderstorm but must bargain with mosquitoes and yield a long-running feud with raccoons.

Nanabush is neither good nor bad—instead, he can take on the role of hero and villain in quick succession, showing how hollow those archetypes actually are. He meets Maggie when he rescues her from a hopeless flat tire—but then reveals to the reader that he caused that flat tire in the first place. Nanabush also often deflates what at first appears serious or portentous, puncturing self-importance with wit and earthy humor. He scrawls seemingly-meaningful petroglyphs on a rock that shake Virgil out of his disaffected stupor, only to explain that the mysterious marking is just a sex joke about taking Maggie to a motel.