When Laughing Boy - a young Navajo living in early twentieth-century Southwestern United States - met Slim Girl at a dance, he was smitten. The two married and built a life together. Despite sharing a Native American heritage, the two grew up very differently. Laughing Boy was raised in a Navajo family. He excelled at traditional tribal skills, such as silversmithing and training horses. By contrast, the US government took Slim Girl at a young age and educated her in American schools, encouraging her to abandon her language, religion, culture, and heritage. LB is simple and optimistic, while SG is world-weary and opportunistic. Slim Girl struggles to maintain a life in both worlds, sometimes deceiving her husband as she returns to a lover who retains a hold on her. After being abandoned by a white man who impregnated her when she was a young adult, Slim Girl turned to a life of prostitution - a life she has not entirely abandoned. She keeps her past secret from her husband, but he loves her regardless. Their relationship is a microcosm of the clash of cultures between whites and reds at the time. Laughing Boy's family and the rest of his people never accept Slim Girl; she never feels at home in either world.

Oliver La Farge's 1929 novel "Laughing Boy" explores cultural identity and loyalty. It is a coming-of-age story, a love story, and a Western saga. It tells of the issues brought about by assimilation.

Many question whether this novel deserved the Pulitzer Prize over other classics of the same year, such as Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" and Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms." Others question if La Farge, a white anthropologist, had the right to tell a personal story about a culture he only observed from the outside. But the author's first novel feels authentic. His protagonists are layered and complex, and he tells their story with sensitivity.