D.E. Lamont

I grew up in the rapidly blossoming residential tracts of Southern California in the 1950s and 60s. My brothers and I explored the wild chaparral-covered hills and canyons, where we found signs of former Native American inhabitants. An exciting one was a cave carved into the limestone with a natural chimney and strange markings on the walls. The ceiling was black with the smoke from countless campfires. These discoveries were a revelation to me and excited my interest in earlier times. They left me with the haunting impression that these mysterious, missing people still waited to tell their stories.

Only many years later did I learn who they were--the Tongva, the original people of southwestern California. They had been driven to near extinction over the last four-plus centuries by Europeans and other conquerors. I wished to honor the Tongva and help more people know about them through my story, The Way of the Eagle. It is set in the period just before the Spaniards came to North America. In the 21st Century roughly 2,000 descendants of the Tongva live in the greater Southern California area. There they gather again to celebrate, honor and protect their heritage and ancestors.

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D.E. Lamont has been an independent nonfiction book editor since the 1980s. She is the author of THE WAY OF THE EAGLE, an Early-California Journey of Awakening. She is also the co-author of three well-received nonfiction books. D.E. and her husband originally lived in a tall apartment building overlooking the majestic mile-wide Hudson River, which at rare times transforms into a mystical rolling river of clouds moving down the river like an army of ghosts. D.E. used this unusual river phenomenon as the namesake of her publishing imprint, Cloud River Press. D.E. and her husband now live among the family farmsteads and lush cornfields of South Central Ohio. She is presently working on a novel and a nonfiction book.