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| Category: Fiction:Adventure |
(requires Adobe Reader)
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| About the Book | |
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There's no doubt that the majority of little girls who have been ignored by their fathers, live out their lives with a feeling of hollowness inside. They are not sure of how they look or what value they have. They are empty; unfulfilled. Their walk forward through life is almost without balance. They never had a father's hand to support them or arms to hold them; but they move forward anyway. And in her moving forward, Jean, the young woman in the story, finds the arms of an older Indian woman, Mamie, who supports her and treats her as though she matters; as though whatever she does is right and her approval is given freely and in friendship. Jean has escaped from a Women's Facility in a small town in New Mexico. She has scrambled across rolling hills and down into deep arroyos until finding Mamie living alone in a trailer on the side of a hill where the ground falls away to a river below. There is an honest relationship between the two from the start. Jean asks for food; but sees that she must work for it, which she does willingly. Her stay is cut short by a visit from the police. Mamie protects her and offers shelter to her in a hideaway high in the mountains where the two of them go. Their mutual respect for each other broadens to include friends who, like themselves, are trying to find the place again that smells to them like earth, trees and grass. A place where the wind blows soft and fresh and eagles soar. A place where the sky is a bright blue and the only sounds are the crackling of the campfire or the playing of children among the trees. Together, they bring back and cultivate the old ways the people had of living and of being proud of their accomplishments and achievements. Theirs is a mixture of old ways and new ways, of old people and young, of white people and red people, with a common thread running through; to search for a way to endure a life without total freedom, without their natural environment, which has shrunken away, and without the motivation they'd always known. Jean is taught a gift-giving dance. She dances in disguise, not wanting to intrude into the Indian ways. The result of the dance is that Mamie and the other women find a way to recall a spiritual feeling which has been lacking and which gives hope of living a better life back to the people. As for Jean, the "hollowness" is beginning to fill.
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| About the Author | |
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Du Sharboneau was a teacher whose school year seemed to end too soon. Her classroom was a labyrinth of Science, Social Studies, Art, Math and Reading projects. She believed that everything is a story. This brought enrichment, facts and knowledge to her students. Now, upon retirement, life continues its story. |