In ancient times, the ancestors of the Pueblo people built dwellings among the rocks and cliffs. They relied on nature to provide rainfall for their crops, but sometimes they had long dry spells. During these times, the people felt they had lost touch with Mother Nature. This story of how things might have been tells of a mysterious stranger who arrives at an ancient pueblo during a time of drought. Even though the people have very little, they discover that they do have gifts from the earth to trade for his magic. Winner, Foreword Magazine Book of the Year, Bronze Medal.
Kathleen Bryant was six months old when her parents bundled her up for her first road trip West, and she's been traveling ever since. Many of her favorite places are within the slickrock canyons, deserts, mountains, and forests of the American West, but her love for the region encompasses its cultures and cuisines as well as its landscapes. Starry skies, spicy food, rabbitbrush-lined roadways, and summer monsoon storms are some of the reasons why she's called the West home for more than twenty years.
An avid hiker, avocational naturalist, and history buff, Bryant is particularly interested in Southwest archaeology, a fascination that has taken her to places as diverse the backcountry trails of Chaco Canyon and a university lab, where she scrubbed pottery shards with a toothbrush. She has also volunteered for the national forest service, monitoring and stabilizing archaeological sites, and leading visitors on tours of ruins and rock art in the Sedona area.
Bryant has published a dozen books, from the award-winning children's story Kokopelli's Gift, to guidebooks for Sedona, Grand Canyon, and the Four Corners. In Western National Parks' Lodges Cookbook, she combines her love of travel and history with recipes from landmark park lodges. She has contributed stories about art, architecture, and the outdoors to American Archaeology, American Artist, Arizona Highways, Sunset, and other magazines. In between writing her own books and articles, she has worked on numerous projects for other authors, from hiking guides and cookbooks to Tad Nichols's haunting tribute to a drowned canyon, Glen Canyon: Images From a Lost World.
Bryant has also worked as a hiking guide and yoga teacher. Among her current projects is assisting teacher Rama Jyoti Vernon with a book about the mythology and sacred geometry of asana.
