AVAILABILITY: Active Record (Readily Available)

Publication Date: July 1998
Publisher: Bantam Books
Binding: Trade Paper
Topics: LESBIANS_FICTION; FICTION_VISIONARY & METAPHYSICAL

Description: In this novel, a prequel to 'The Fifth Sacred Thing', Starhawk traces the early life of Maya Greenwood from the stormy battle of the Sixties through the time of her mother's death twenty years later.

Writer, priestess, and visionary Maya Greenwood has remained true to her one moment of connection to the land and its spirits. But now, approaching her fortieth year, she has lost her way. Seeking to reclaim her power, she goes on a pilgrimage to her sister Debby's remote mountain clinic in Nepal, their dead mother's ashes in her backpack.

Together, Maya hopes she and Debby can heal their fractured family bonds, allowing Maya to finally lay her past to rest and breathe new life into her future. Yet the past proves heavier than Maya ever suspected, as she begins the laborious climb through a landscape of memories. In the journal given to her by Johanna Weaver - her soul sister, her mirror, her lover - she relives the ecstatic union they first formed as teenage rebels, a union still challenged by convention and Johanna's fierce commitment to her African foremothers.

In the letters from Rio Connolly - that wild, impulsive, doomed youth - she re-enters the dreams they once built together as outlaws blazing a path for change. Now Rio, transformed by his own struggles, calls to her across ten thousand miles. Whatever Maya decides will have dire consequences. If she rejects Rio's offer, she will close a door forever on an opportunity to reclaim her past. But if she goes back to him, she must reveal an intimate secret kept far too long - a secret that could shatter Maya's vision for the future.

Starhawk is the bestselling author of The Fifth Sacred Thingl The Spiral Dance, Dreaming the Dark, and Truth Or Dare. A feminist and peace activist, she is one of the foremost voices of ecofeminism and travels widely in North America and Europe giving lectures and workshops. She lives in San Francisco, where she works with the Reclaiming collective, which offers classes, workshops, and public rituals in earth-based spirituality.

Review(s): "Slated to be one of the great visionary Utopian novels of the century...It's a rare book to which I give such a high recommendation; but I spent the best part of three days reading it, and at the end, I would have loved it to be longer. I simply fell in love with both characters and setting. It's a wonderful book." - Marion Zimmer Bradley, author of 'The Forest House'

"With humor, insight, and a superb eye for detail, Starhawk tells the story of a generation, the one we've labeled 'baby-boomer,' ... Prepare to be swept away by a book that is so well-written that it's very hard to put down." - NAPRA Review

"Uplifting and entertaining." - Kirkus Reviews

"A natural writer... an affirming tale." - Publishers Weekly