I WEAR THE MORNING STAR: Part Three of the Ghost Horse Cycle.

Highwater, Jamake (Jackie Marks, 1931-2001).

ISBN 10: 0060223553 / ISBN 13: 9780060223557

Published by Harper & Row, New York, 1984

About this Item

First printing. The third in his award winning series of novels which chronicle the history of three generations of Northern Plains Indian family. Written for young adults, this is 'a moving, sometimes brutal, self-portrait of a young artist' and how Sitka uses his painting to resurrect his Indian heritage. 148 pp. Very good in very good dust jacket (boards slightly bent.).

Seller Inventory # 23962

Bibliographic Details

• Title: I WEAR THE MORNING STAR: Part Three of the Ghost Horse Cycle.
• Publisher: Harper & Row, New York
• Publication Date: 1984
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060223553
• ISBN 13: 9780060223557
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: VERY GOOD
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Seller catalogs:
  • Historical Fiction

About this title

Synopsis

Sitko, growing up in a hostile white world that tries to make him renounce his heritage as an American Indian, finds refuge in the pictures he paints.

Reviews

Grade 8 Up A fascinating blending of realism with mystical elements, told in poetic prose. Sitko, the believable and sympathetic narrator, is the grandson of Amana, the Northern Plains Indian heroine of Highwater's Legend Days (1984) and The Ceremony of Innocence (1985, both Harper). Like his grandmother, he is brave, rebellious and tenacious in holding onto his native American cultural heritage and resisting racial prejudice. Sitko relates the story of his childhood and youth in Southern California during the late '40s and '50s, beginning with his placement in an orphanage where he was physically and psychologically abused. He is later reunited with his mother and grandmother at the home of a movie actor with whom Sitko's mother is living. Throughout these years of growing up, Sitko's father, Jamie Ghost Horse, appears periodically. He returns one final time to kill his estranged wife and injure her lover. By novel's end the lover, Sitko's brother and Amana have died, and nothing remains but a cascade of fantastic images that pour from the fingers of Sitko Ghost Horse as he keeps alive the past in the vivid colors and images of his paintings. I Wear the Morning Star is as original and powerful as the first two in the series. All have the same unique melding of Amer-Indian mysticism with realism and incorporate themes dealing with interpersonal relationships among family members as well as people with differing racial and cultural backgrounds. Sitko and the other characers are well-limned protagonists whose believable exploits enable readers to better understand another culture and its people. David A. Lindsey, Lakewood Junior/Senior High School Library, Wash.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The third book of Highwater's Ghost Horse Cycle, this wrenching novel is told by Sitko, grandson of Amana, the heroic Indian woman introduced in Legend Days. It begins when Sitko's mother abandons him at a public home called Star of Good Hope, where he is ostracized and beaten, and ends with his beloved grandmother's death, when he, a young man, is making paintings of her memories. Sitko's brother Reno tells him, "Nobody's got to be an Indian if he doesn't want to be," but Sitko can never be anything else. The pictures and stories he creates arise from "the dark place" in his heart that is fiercely Indian. Alone or in the company of the other Ghost Horse books, this is a deeply imagined work that is likely to last. Relentlessly tragic, Sitko's narrative pours forth with the vivid power of a dream.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.