Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 1, 1995 TAG: 9509290107
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: F-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Look through a hole in time," this fable begins. Thereby drawing the reader into an absorbing mystery. What role does the artist play in human survival?
The best fantasy fiction - and I'm not sure it's fair to relegate this novel to any genre, even one of which I'm fond - expands consciousness. It asks the reader to re-examine received wisdom. It pushes the reader to question perceptions, myths, processes, origins.
And it does so by presenting characters so real, so familiar, that they speak to contemporary concerns, even from the distance of unknowable or "fantastic" settings.
Two prehistoric Native Americans, Deer Shadow and Wind Caller, are the characters at the center of this novel. She (Deer Shadow), a member of a pre-Anasazi tribe, discovers the gift of drawing; he (Wind Caller), a proto-Mayan, discovers music when he learns to carve a flute. Both discoveries seem magic.
Indeed, both discoveries ARE magic, as all such discoveries are. Consequently, both discoveries are problematic - for their discoverers and for the cultures into which they are assimilated.
Through a series of fascinating circumstances, Deer Shadow and Wind Caller very soon discover each other, as well. United, these two outsiders make even more powerful "magic"; they engender even more powerful change in their world.
In our current political climate, what concerns could be more contemporary than these: What is the role of the artist? What good does any individual's art contribute to the people? What toll does making art exact on the individual? Which changes are the good changes?
Now, don't let me give you the idea that this is some ponderous philosophical tome. I admit that I find the examination of such themes fascinating. But not at the expense of a good story.
And there's plenty of good story to keep you turning the pages. Will Deer Shadow survive her stepmother's treatment? Will she ever marry? Will her tribe, the Yellow Grass People, force her out when she revels too much in her powers? And who IS the father of her child?
Will Wind Caller survive, first, banishment and, then, the wilderness into which he's cast? Will he actually tame that coyote pup? Will his maize grow, or will Cat Ears destroy it? And will he really teach the Yellow Grass People war?
Roanoker Amanda Cockrell is an accomplished novelist. Under her own name and under various pseudonyms, she's published another fantasy, a mystery thriller, a Viking series, a Western series, a Roman centurion series, a 19th-century American family saga and a series she describes as "a seething plantation saga that I'll never tell anyone I wrote."
Believe me, she knows how to tell a good story. But lots of writers know how to tell a good story. Knowing, too, how to give texture and meaning to characters as removed in time as these; and knowing how to examine the spiritual world by depicting the physical one - these are rare gifts. Personally, I'm very much looking forward to the next two volumes in this promised trilogy.
Monty S. Leitch is a columnist for this newspaper.
by CNB