Shifting Stars

Skye is born into a remote world of the unsettled West--her Scottish father a loving but moody mountain man, her mother a Lakota bride taken from her Sioux family by this passionate Highlander. But the steel-springed lunge of a mountain lion tears Skye's mother from her, starting her on a destiny-filled journey. With half-Scottish feet clad in Indian moccasins, Skye walks two separate paths, not knowing whether to believe her father's bitter enemy who calls her a half-breed, or Turtle Woman, her proud Lakota grandmother. "Granddaughter, do not be ashamed. Your blood is like the Fire Without End. And the blood of your children will be like the sacred fire, for no matter how diluted the blood of your descendants becomes, the sacred fire will always burn within their soul. You, my takoja, have become the Keeper of the Flame." Born beneath a comet of shifting stars and bequeathed a warrior's legacy, Skye must learn to wield her father's broadsword. On a journey to the sacred Medicine Wheel, filled with love and revenge, she learns finally that to be a woman warrior has little to do with fighting, and everything to do with spirit.

Skye is the product of two proud cultures: Highlander Scots and Lakota Sioux. Her mother, Breathcatcher, was a Lakota princess when she met and married her father, Gregory McDonald, a trapper who left Scotland to escape persecution of Highlanders. When Skye was a child, Breathcatcher died. Now a young woman, she returns with her father to visit her maternal grandparents, hoping to connect with her Lakota heritage. But all is not well in the Lakota camp. Gregory's old rival for Breathcatcher, Caws Like Magpie, still nurses a bitterness that he now directs toward Skye. His ominous presence eventually separates Gregory and Skye and propels her toward a deeper understanding of her mixed heritage. This lyrical, heartfelt period novel re-creates a particular time and a place while illustrating the universality of the human experience through the ages. Wonderful reading. Wes Lukowsky

Skye Macdonald, daughter of a Scottish father and a Lakota Indian mother, grows to adulthood feeling alienated from both cultures. The death of her mother when Skye is seven and the resulting withdrawal of her father enhance her feelings of isolation. When father and daughter rejoin the Lakota tribe in the late 1840s, hunters, government treaties, wagon trains, and other signs of white civilization have created resentment and distrust among the Lakota that is projected onto Skye. It is her grandmother, closely guarding the secret of her own parentage, who teaches Skye the Lakota ways. Lambert (In Search of Kinship, LJ 5/1/96) has written a powerful story of the Plains Indians at a time when generations of traditions are being challenged by outside forces. She has packed it with facts about Indian life and customs and tempered it with love and family loyalty that personalize the story for the general fiction reader. Highly recommended.?Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale
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