A Native American woman blends her personal history of struggle with the story of native women who participated in key events during the Indian Wars more than a century ago. 12,000 first printing. 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. *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 Hogan's report of pain and injury comes to us from a deeply disturbing place....Her bravery leaves us standing in silence. -- Barry Lopez It reminds us who we are, where we have been, where we are going. -- Joy Harjo, author of A Map to the Next World With threads of personal history, tribal memory and lore, Linda Hogan has woven a blanket rich and complicated. -- Greg Sarris, author of Watermelon Nights [A] brilliant, harrowing account of illness and healing, by one of our best writers. -- Leslie Marmon Silko, author of Ceremony Linda Hogan is the recipient of an American Book Award. Her novel, Mean Spirit , was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She lives in Idledale, Colorado.