Book excerpt: In the Cascade Range of northwest Washington, Tom Joseph, a young Indian who had gone south to attend college, returns for his uncle's funeral and finds himself caught up in the old man’s fight to save the wilderness from destruction. In his first novel, Louis Owens exposes the raw edge of the current American land-rights controversy and poses questions about authenticity and the common bonds that American Indians, of very different or mixed backgrounds, are in the process of discovering today.