Now available in paperback! In the tradition of Calvino's Italian
Folktales, Greg Sarris, author of the award-winning novel Grand
Avenue, turns his attention to his ancestral homeland of Sonoma
Mountain in Northern California. In sixteen interconnected original
stories, the twin crows Question Woman and Answer Woman take us through
a world unlike yet oddly reminiscent of our own: one which blooms bright
with poppies, lupines, and clover; one in which Water Bug kidnaps an
entire creek; in which songs have the power to enchant; in which Rain is
a beautiful woman who keeps people's memories in stones. Inspired by
traditional Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo creation tales, these stories
are timeless in their wisdom and beauty, and because of this
timelessness their messages are vital and immediate. The figures in
these stories ponder the meaning of leadership, of their place within
the landscape and their community. In these stories we find a model for
how we can all come home again. At once timeless and contemporary, How
a Mountain Was Made is equally at home in modern letters as the ancient
story cycle. Sarris infuses his stories with a prose stylist's
creativity and inventiveness, moving American Indian literature in an
emergent direction.
