Amador Book: JOURNEY FROM THE KEEP OF BONES

Cover
Trade paper -- 376 pp.
3 illustrations -- $20.00
ISBN-10: 0-938513-36-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-938513-36-0

Visionary, Literary Fiction from Award-Winning Author Michelle Miller Allen

JOURNEY FROM THE KEEP OF BONES

Miller Allen interweaves the stories of four characters on spiritual quests which take place alternately in ancient Mesoamerica and contemporary New Mexico.

Named First Runner Up for Best Visionary Fiction in the National Coalition of Visionary Resources (COVR) 2003 Awards

"BEAUTIFUL AND MOVING"
Having had the fortune of living for a while in New Mexico, where nature overwhelms and, most strangely, compels one to ascertain the presence of one's soul, I was flabbergasted by Michelle Miller Allen's uncanny new novel. She manages to blend the farthest past, probably not real, with the anguished present, too real as to be desperate. No wonder that the desert where the characters' imaginations erupt like volcanos, is called Ojo de Sombras, "Eye of Shadows." Miller Allen possesses that eye and keeps the reader enthralled by the vastness that human nature can attain. —Isaac Chocrón, renowned Venezuelan playwright and novelist; 1992 PNM Endowed Chair, UNM; author of PERSONAL PRONOUNS, serialized in El Nacional, (Caracas, 2002)

"EXPLORING WILD TERRITORY"
What we need in this world are new stories, new ways to see the old impasses and injuries. Miller Allen's novel opens up a parallel interior world that I loved visiting and more than loved, learned from and was changed by. —Jennifer Louden, author of THE COMFORT QUEEN'S GUIDE TO LIFE

The story... De-jah and Ku-en are ancient Mesoamerican jaguar priests, and trouble is brewing in their village. Their women have finally had enough repression and are breaking serious taboos. In the chaos that ensues, rash promises are made by the jaguar priests and their women — they will return together in the future, reincarnated as the opposite sex.

In the contemporary singles world of New Mexico, Maxine, Conner, Travis and Adrianne begin to rediscover each other and their strange connected past. With the help of Light (a Santa Fe channeler), a TV anthropologist, Motorcycle Woman, a mysterious jaguar knife, and through a series of synchronistic events, the four reincarnates become intimate, against a background of self-help pop psychology, modern relationship issues, urban tension and spiritual healing in the New Mexico desert.

In this character-driven novel of love and spirit, an interwoven journey of these souls through and beyond sex role identity takes place as a serious-but-playful exploration of Western gender relations. While these men and women struggle with their karmic attractions to and repulsions from one another, this novel carries a hopeful message; as Light tells the lovers,

"Fear is inappropriate at this time. Be prepared for love beyond your wildest dreams!"

Catherine Bean Weser, Santa Fe Channeler, responds...
"Reading JOURNEY FROM THE KEEP OF THE BONES is a shamanic voyage into deep dimensions of relationship. Not just male-female relationship, but the relationship of lifetime to lifetime, place to place. I was transported from my culture into an indigenous culture and back again, exploring men, women, and their conscious and unconscious agreements. Every character resides in an emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical time/space that is familiar and fascinating simultaneously. It is a compassionately and passionately written novel that carries you through the difficulties of love's expression to a true and wonderful expression of love.

"As a channeler, I often wander through fields of consciousness and dream rivers of mythology. Michelle Miller Allen's novel is a landscape of mystical themes and one I thoroughly enjoyed. As you read it, you too will be entranced by the power of spirit as it is conveyed through this story of spiritual quest and love."

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