Online book review site Bookviews gives high praise for Leah Martin's recently released novel Inside the Silver Light.
(PRWEB) July 1, 2004 -- Bookviews, the online review site, has high praise for Kansas author Leah Martins novel Inside the Silver Light. Set in the Badlands of South Dakota," Bookviews reviewer Alan Caruba says, it tells of three womens lives who must cope with life in an unforgiving place."
Beginning in January 1984," Caruba says, a hidden murder on the Pine Ridge Reservation brings them together in a tangle of revenge, broken love, death and redemption. It makes for compelling reading."
Martin, a native Kansan, lives in Concordia, Kansas, where she is a publishing director of Storywright Books.
Place is important in this novel," she says. The reservation is stark, vulnerable, and edgy." The book weaves in events of the American Indian Movement and its clashes with the Federal government in the mid-seventies. A ten-year-old boy whose parents were killed during this time has come of age. This man touches the lives of native Americans, cowboys, Jesuits, mission teachers, and other people on the reservation in tragic and mysterious ways, throws lovers together, and tears them apart.
Martin says, The book also shows the deep complications that can develop between two cultures, between whites and natives."
Being faithful to memories that haunt me," is what inspired the book, she says. I lived on the Pine Ridge Reservation for a number of years and could never forget what the place did to me. I remember seeing two graves on the roadside. They were adorned with four ribbons–black, white, red and yellow. I was told they represented the four directions and were the colors of the American Indian Movement. Those graves held the bodies of AIM members."
One of Martins students on the reservation was the young daughter of a prominent AIM member. He was imprisoned for his part in the movement," she says. Every spring my student and her family would load up the car and drive to Leavenworth to visit him. Hes still there."
But it wasnt until several years after I left the reservation that I truly understood," Martin says. I came across Peter Matthiessens In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. Matthiessen wrote an astounding book about the continuing oppression of the Lakota people. In America we have our own conspiracies, coverups, and acts of terror. Our Western culture remains comfortable and powerful at the expense of other cultures. Such is the dilemma of the Native American."
Inside the Silver Light is available at local bookstores and online.
Contact information:
Larry Uri
Storywright Books
P.O. Box 408
Concordia, KS 66901
785.243.4494
larryuri@sbcglobal.net
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