Mona Susan Power Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Mona Susan Power is a published author.

She is known for her debut novel The Grass Dancer. The book came out in 1997 for readers to enjoy for the first time. It was awarded a PEN/Hemingway Prize for best first fiction and was a national bestseller.

She has also written Roofwalker. The collection of essays and stories did well and was awarded the Milkweed National Fiction Prize. Her novel Sacred Wilderness received the Electa Quinney Award. A Council of Dolls came out in 2023.

Mona attended Harvard College, graduating and then going on to attend and graduate from Harvard Law School. After working in the law field for a short time, she decided that she wanted to be a writer. She would work as a tech writer and editor, saving her off hours to write creatively. She became part of the MFA program in 1992 at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.

Mona has received many grants which have helped to support her writing over the years, including the James Michener Fellowship, an Iowa Arts Fellowship, a Princeton Hodder Fellowship, a Radcliffe Bunting Institute Fellowship, a USA Artists Fellowship, a McKnight Fellowship, and a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowship.

She has had her essays and short stories be published in different anthologies and publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, The Best American Short Stories, The Paris Review, Granta, Ploughshares, and The Missouri Review.

Mona is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. She was born in 1961 in Chicago, where she grew up. She was a part of the Chicago Indian Village movement as a child, which was a group that came together to protest the conditions for Native people who had been drawn to the urban areas being promised good jobs and housing but rarely had those claims brought to fruition. A documentary that followed the group’s experienced was nominated for an Academy Award and Mona went to the ceremonies as a guest of the director.

Her mother was an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe as well. Her great-grandmother was a descendant of a Sioux Chief and went by the name of Nellie Two Bear Gates. Mona’s father had New England European and American descent and was a publishing salesman. Mona grew up hearing many stories about her family that helped spark her imagination.

The author resides in Minnesota where she continues to write. She also teaches in St. Paul at Hamline University.

The Grass Dancer is the first novel to come out from Mona Susan Power. If you want something unique and original to read, give this novel a try!

Ghost Horse was a handsome young man and a sacred clown in the 1960s. He was in love with Red Dress, a beautiful warrior woman who he lost in death. The spirits of the two want to be reunited more than anything, and even end up influencing the fates of those who come after them.

Time has moved on some, and the time is the 1980s. Red Dress has a descendant in Charlene Thunder, a young teenage girl who has fallen for a traditional dancer named Harley Wind Soldier, who has descended from the lineage of Ghost Horse.

Harley’s love is killed in a random accident. Charlene thinks her grandmother could have done it. She is a witch, and she might have caused the death of Harley’s father and brother too. Will she be able to get to the bottom of the truth after all of this, or will Charlene find out that the truth is a little too strange to be believed? Read The Ghost Dancer to find out!

A Council of Dolls is a 2023 novel from Mona Susan Power. This compelling book is worth a read and made the longlist for the National Book Award for Fiction. The story covers three different generations of women from the Yanktonai Dakota tribe, following them from the nineteenth century to today. This book has been called a ‘modern masterpiece’, so check it out if you’re looking for something unique and distinct that will also be a satisfying read.

From Chicago in the middle of the century to the old lands of the Dakota people, to horrible Indian boarding schools, this book tells three different women’s tales, told through the stories of the dolls that they had with them in part.

Sissy was born in 1961, and often has a tempestuous relationship with her mother. Her mother is beautiful but also can blow up frequently. Her life is also full of wonderful things, including her new Christmas gift: a doll named Ethel. Sissy finds that her doll gives her good advice and says nice things, and might even end up saving her life.

There is also Lillian, who was born in 1925 in a time where much was changing. Lillian tries to make it through the change by relying on her sister Blanche and Mae, her doll. When the girls must go to a school for Indians far off from where they live, it’s terrifying. Blanche will not let herself be intimidated by the horrible nuns there. But when tragedy hits the sisters, it might just be Mae who protects them.

Cora was born in 1888. She was part of the Indian Wars, but is not afraid of the men who take her to go to a new school far away to become civilized. Then when her buckskin and Winona, her beaded doll are burned, this young girl might just find out that the spirit of her doll is not gone forever.

An interesting and even hopeful story, this is the tale of different women through the years and their experiences being Indian and the clashes with the American culture. This story also brings to light the massacres of native people as well as the damage done by these boarding schools that still leaves a mark to this day. Read A Council of Dolls to absorb all of Mona Susan Power’s wonderful prose for yourself and see what you think!