Hayes has been the subject of poetry, of theatrical productions, of documentaries, of biographical essays.

The cumulative picture that emerges from this body of work is of a man who has inspired genuine sympathy and admiration, whose story has been used repeatedly to make points about Native American history and the costs of war and the gap between public image and private reality — but who remains, in much of this work, more symbol than person.

What gets lost in the symbolic version is the specificity.

The particular texture of growing up on the Gila River reservation in the 1930s.