What in life is unconquerable; what survives? On The Faithful Gardener, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés mines the rich storytelling tradition of her own family to unearth a series of lyrical stories that illustrate how faith is the one immortal force in our lives. Raised by a family of refugee immigrants who revered stories as healing instruments, Dr. Estés tells these ageless tales first told "... to nourish, repair, and strengthen – whatever is most needed and wanted." What begins as a simple tale from the lips of a child becomes the greater saga of Uncle Zovár, a quiet refugee from the Nazi slave camps, and his refusal to let bitterness darken his devotion to the earth. The final story, told in the form of a vivid old country tale about "that which can never die," holds an unforgettable lesson about sacrifice and spiritual regeneration. The Faithful Gardener captures the spirit of a long-ago time, while deeply expressing our common desire to know that grappling with sudden and unexpected twists of fate and challenging transitions – however painful – is never in vain.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D. is an award-winning poet, diplomate senior jungian psychoanalyst, and a cantadora (keeper of the old stories) in the Hispanic tradition. She has been in private practice for twenty-five years and is former executive director of the C. G. Jung Center for Research and Education in the United States. The author of The Gift of Story and an eleven-volume series of bestselling audio works published by Sounds True in Boulder, Colorado, Dr. Estés heads the C. P Estés Guadalupe Foundation, a human rights organization that has as one of its nascent missions the broadcasting of strengthening stories via shortwave radio to trouble spots throughout the world.
