A librarian of Cherokee ancestry rekindles and reinvents her Native identity by discovering the rhythm and spark of traditionally told stories in the most unusual places in the modern world. Ada Ronner, a librarian at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, hears books speak, and senses their restless flow as they circulate. The same relentless energy and liberation of the story told and the trickster barely contained is also felt by Ada as she roller skates at the Dust Bowl, a local skating rink, floating far ahead of her husband, Ether, a physics professor.Hearing "the old Cherokee voices" as she works and skates in the Manuscript and Rare Book room in the library, Ada grows increasingly aware of the continuing power of Cherokee tradition today. Coming from a culture based in oral tradition, Ada discovers the potentially liberating rather than limiting role of the written word and she finds her own empowerment as its promulgator and re-inventor in the twenty-first century. "Designs of the Night Sky" moves between the turbulent history of a tribe and the survivors of that history still caught in turmoil. Rolling from past to present, and present to past, Glancy's story provokes, illumines, and forces us to reconsider the form and effect of Native American stories in today's world.Diane Glancy is a professor of English at Macalester College. She won the 1991 North American Indian Prose Award for "Claiming Breath" (Nebraska, 1992). Her non-fiction work includes "The Cold-and-Hunger Dance" (Nebraska, 1998).