A Day Off from Reckoning

The author has combined three triptychs of her earlier works into this hefty book of 656 pages (Volume One of three volumes). The volume embarks on a saucy, fervent jaunt with an impassioned tango dancer. The second novella swings around to laud the life of a father, capturing unfathomable undertones: "My father is a very complex man-a very misunderstood man-full of enigma." At the end of the story, the daughter discovers just how esoteric her father really is. The thread of an otherworldly father is picked up further in the book "The Elevator Maker's Daughter."_______ The life saga of a Native American couple begins in "Home Before Nine" and ends in the last book of the volume "Never Home" (to be picked up further in Volumes Two and Three). Within the life saga Fala reflects, "When they sent my mother away from the Indian Reservation to one of the missionary boarding schools, her papa's words were the only thing that kept her going. He said, 'The dandelion? People in the cities kill it every year from their yards. It is not a weed to kill. It is a wholesome growing thing that heals. You are not an unwanted weed. You are a healing force that reckons. You are as beautiful as the fly away dandelion ring ' I mean, that is confusing too: all these little Indian kids wanting to stay home with their families and instead the government forces them to go to the boarding schools, especially if the families are immersed in their ancestors' ways. And then, if you refuse to do as they say, sometimes they would just snatch your kids (making up some sorry excuse) - put them with foster families in the cities - and you were lucky if you ever saw them again. Then all these little kids come home - from the government schools or maybe the foster families - having forgotten their language (you got hit if you spoke it at the schools) and scorning their parents' ways. What a process. The process of wiping out natural bonds and implanting artificial, unsustaining ones. No wonder I'm angry." ------------------- The Chiefs told our Healers that they were suspicious without justification. But history has proven our Intuitive Ones were correct. "The tribe's Seers acting out of deep concern for the plight of their future generations." ------------------ No One Was Listening. ------------------