From Publishers Weekly
In a Cree Indian story, Wolverine convinced the animals of the world to keep their eyes closed, so humans wouldn't see their "inner fire" and try to steal it. People, too, can close their eyes and protect their inner fires even if it means those fires may burn them, observes Hogan (Mean Spirit), an award-winning Chickasaw novelist and poet. She herself was seared by such bottled-up fire throughout her girlhood. Raised by an alcoholic, army sergeant father and a pathologically silent mother, she turned first, at age 12, to a steady older lover, then to alcohol. Her adult life, too, has been a series of struggles adopting two seriously disturbed children, enduring amnesia following a head injury and coping with her fibromyalgia but she has learned from each experience to find beauty and grace even in darkness. Hogan's memories spill out in waves of layered associations: from fire to pain, from "phantom pain" to "phantom worlds," from glaciers to dreams. Into her personal history, she integrates stories from the American Indian past. In Hogan's writing, the smallest detail can evoke a whole history: that Chief Joseph's skull was sold to be used as an ashtray sums up the tragic mistreatment of American Indians at the hands of whites. Wiping out so much Native wisdom has left our world diminished, defoliated in "landscape and spirit," in Hogan's eyes. Still, Native culture is beginning to thrive again, reminding us that just as every "before" has an "after," "beginnings" have "returns." Life, Hogan concludes, "may never be easy but may be beautiful," even in this "broken world." This wise and compassionate offering deserves to be widely reviewed and read. Agent, Beth Vesel, Sanford J. Greenberger Associates. (June)Forecast: Deep and full of grace, Hogan's writing is every bit as good as ever. Anyone who knows anything about Native American writing will rush to buy it.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Following critical praise for her other works, including the Pulitzer Prize-nominated novel Mean Spirit, Hogan offers a memoir rich with the texture of her life as a Chickasaw Indian. Each chapter weaves together her personal and often tragic experiences as the daughter of an army sergeant with Native history, myths, legends, earth, and contemporary life. Although she is often depicting painful events, her voice resonates calm. For example, an unsettling discussion of her pubescent love affair with an adult man while her family is stationed in Germany introduces exploitation and abuse. This is followed by the strong and tranquil chapter "Water: A Love Story," in which she crosses the ocean on her return to America. She is a "child held up by water" as she travels "away from a broken human past." Even the chapter titles emit an otherworldly quality: "Fire, Dreams and Visions: The Given-Off Light," "Silence Is My Mother," and "Bones, and Other Precious Gems." Words, after all, "are the defining shape of a human spirit." A very good book that goes a long way toward explaining Native Americans today; for all academic and public libraries.- Sue Samson, Univ. of Montana, Missoula Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
*Starred Review* Chickasaw novelist Hogan's penetrating memoir is a conduit for her lacerating vision of the tragic legacies of the U.S. government's war on Native Americans. The anguish of her personal experiences and the sorrows of the decimated tribal world are palpable in her taut, metaphor-rich syntax as she pieces together autobiography and portraits of such forebears as Lozen, a woman healer and Geronimo's chief military strategist. Hogan inherited her mother's severe depression and was pushed into a soul-crushing "marriage" at age 12. She later overcame suicidal alcoholism by working to help other native people, a commitment that inspired her and her husband to adopt two young girls who, unbeknownst to them, had been so severely abused they sustained profound psychological disorders. Add Hogan's affliction with a neuromuscular disease and a serious head injury, and hers is a wrenching story indeed. But she counters loss with revelation in hauntingly beautiful meditations on water, earth, bone, and fire, silence and words, which reveal the link between the suffering of her ancestors and the traumas that have beset her and her family. Transcendent and cathartic, Hogan's indelible narrative ultimately celebrates love, the "mighty force" that enables even the most harrowed not only to endure but to grow in spirit and wisdom. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Pam Houston, O magazine
A deeply courageous account of Hogan's personal and tribal history...staggering.


Publishers Weekly starred review
This wise and compassionate offering deserves to be widely read.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The powerful story of one woman's family and the way in which tribal history informs her own past. "I sat down to write a book about pain and ended up writing about love," says award-winning Chickasaw poet and novelist Linda Hogan. In this book, she recounts her own difficult childhood as the daughter of an army sergeant, her love affair at age fifteen with an older man, the legacy of alcoholism, and the troubled history of the two daughters she adopted. She shows how historic and emotional pain are passed down through generations while revealing her own struggles with physical pain, and she blends personal history with stories of important Indian figures of the past such as Lozen, the woman who was the military strategist for Geronimo, and Ohiyesha, the Santee Sioux medical doctor who witnessed the massacre at Wounded Knee. Ultimately, Hogan sees herself and her people whole again and gives us an illuminating story of personal spiritual triumph.

FROM THE CRITICS

Greg Sarris

With threads of personal history, tribal memory and lore, Linda Hogan has woven a blanket rich and complicated.

Barry Lopez

Hogan's report of pain and injury comes to us from a deeply disturbing place....Her bravery leaves us standing in silence.

Joy Harjo

It reminds us who we are, where we have been, where we are going.

Pam Houston

A deeply courageous account of Hogan's personal and tribal history...staggering.

Leslie Marmon Silko

[A] brilliant, harrowing account of illness and healing, by one of our best writers. Read all 8 "From The Critics" >

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