The Toe Bone and the Tooth: An Ancient Mayan Story Relived in Modern Times: Leaving Home to Come Home - Hardcover

Prechtel, Martin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007142676 ISBN 13: 9780007142675

Publisher: Thorsons Pub, 2002

Synopsis

Lyrically written, filled with irony, mystery, and magic, the author shows how this powerful mythic story can be a pattern for everyone's life and how understanding ancient myths can ensure our spiritual survival in the modern world.

About this title

About the Author:

Martin Prechtel was raised on a pueblo reservation in New Mexico before moving to Guatemala to live with the Tzutijil people of Santiago Atitlan. He was first apprenticed as a Mayan shaman and rose to become the First Chief of the village. On returning to the US, he began working in New Mexico as a medicine man. He is now an internationally recognized healer, speaker and artist, who writes frequently for journals and periodicals.

From Publishers Weekly:

Following up on Secrets of the Talking Jaguar and Long Life, Honey in the Heart, Prechtel closes his epic autobiographical trilogy by mixing Mayan myths with a first-person account of his efforts to escape from Guatemala with his family intact during the 1980s civil war that tore the country apart. The book opens with an extended rendering of a myth in which corn is introduced to Central America after a tumultuous romance between a human named Raggedy Boy and a goddess known as the Water-Skirted Beauty. Prechtel's own narrative is far less clear-cut-he begins by exploring the history of Santiago Atitlan, the village that is the setting for the myth, then delves into the political and religious repression he witnesses as a village resident. While this digressive style allows for a variety of perspectives to float within the narrative simultaneously, passages of elaborate, florid prose render the material uneven. While Prechtel's love for Guatemala and the people of Central America remains obvious throughout, most compelling is the suspense-filled section at book's end, where government troops arrive and threaten both Prechtel and his family before they can make their way to Los Angeles and then Prechtel's native New Mexico.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thorsons Pub
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0007142676
• ISBN 13: 9780007142675
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384