Fortitude is common among first-time authors on book tour. In fact it's required. Especially the kind you may have needed, say, last September, when a grand total of three people showed up for your reading in Oklahoma City. Stoicism: A must-have. Terror, which blooms at four in the morning and...

A few years ago, I sat in my car outside the tribal clinic on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, being tied to my steering wheel by a two-year-old Northern Arapaho boy named Quame. We were waiting for his mother to finish her appointment. Then she and Quame would...