RED BLOOD: A NOVEL FOR YOUTH
AND OTHERS IN NEED OF
INSPIRATION IN
DIFFICULT TIMES

RED BLOOD is a novel that I started to write in 1979 during a magical summer of inspiration. It took me a few years to iron out the kinks and to give full voice to female as well as male voices. Jesse Rainwater, his sisters, brothers, and parents, Ramona Big Deer, Loretta Begay, Mary of the Salmon River, ancient Antonio Chavis, and the dog El Sabio are all characters in a novel that seeks to bring forth a sense of the possibilities of a life based upon traditional Native values, but lived in the context of overcoming racism, poverty, alienation, and hostile or indifferent educational institutions.
Brown-skinned American Indians, part-African Native Americans, Chicanos and Mexicanos of Indian blood, and other persons kept in ignorance of their own identity and heritages by school systems and colleges overwhelmingly focused on a white, middle-class, eurocentric curricula and culture, will find in Red Blood one of the very few novels to face directly the issues experienced by many kinds of non-white and working-class peoples.
North America is the setting as Jesse, Ramona, Ladell, Clare, and others explore Native cultural traditions and settings including Lenape-Delaware, Navajo, Oklahoma rural, urban Los Angeles, Mexico City, Oklahoma Freedman, African-American, and rural Southwestern. The tapestry of lives revealed should help confused youth and adults to unravel the mysteries and complexities caused by growing up in poverty or in urban or rural settings where little encouragement exists for their own personal self-realization.
Basically, Jesse and Ramona, with the help of Antonio Chavis and other elders, live in a "can do" world. The story stops on an upward path because it shows how people can overcome obstacles and such negative traits as alcoholism to get on a spiritual road, the wilaosit mutomakan, the path of a good person. Above all, Red Blood is a novel of love, of the beauty of unselfish love, not only between humans but also between humans and animals and between humans and the Wemi Tali (the All-Where).
It is must reading for youth from junior high through college, and is to be recommended for adults of all ages. It especially should be used in high schools and juvenile facilities serving youth who are alienated from the dominant school culture and who are not aware of the wide extent of racial mixtures or the richness of non-white heritages and philosophies. Here we have a deeply moving story for all persons who want to experience a breath of fresh air in this often violent and ugly world.

(RED BLOOD may be ordered from Theytus Books, one of the largest publishers of Indigenous-authored works. Email them at <theytusbooks@vip.net> or go to their web site.)