This collection of short fiction from Mohawk writer Maurice Kenny pushes us to explore truth or what we may perceive as truth, showing us different truths: truth of character, natural truth, everyday truth. Tortured Skins and Other Fictions, fourteen in number, form a cohesive study of characters and the anxiety provoking landscapes they inhabit--seemingly idyllic settings are inverted, becoming corrupt backdrops for slaughter and destruction--a broad metaphor for the relationships between the natives of this continent and its later colonizers.
The bear, as a trickster figure, resurfaces in various guises, various "'skins," throughout the pieces, confronting oblivious characters with their relationships to their worlds. These stories reflect today's world, merging its preoccupations of pop culture and paranormal occurrences. with the long oral tradition motif of animals existing as teachers with sometimes dubious methods--the X-Files colliding with contemporary Native American fiction.