Customer Reviews

Sacred Cave: a novel set in America's prehistoric southeast

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Sacred Cave is an amazing new weave of Native American prehistoric talents exploring myriad ancient pathways into ultrasensory forms of knowledge and awareness. The author draws us deeply into the raw natural world, often filled with magical beings and mystical opportunities, while exploring the broad practical necessities of life. I liked the "literary voices" of Sacred Cave as a means of "passing the Talking Stick" from one character to the next continually expanding the male/female roles and mindsets.
Sacred Cave enables us to glimpse the lives & emotions of ancient people as they sought to survive & better their natural world. It takes us into bright passages of dreams & shamanic experiences cast to make the people's lives better. What an intriguing mix of characters. Generations of native Mound Builders begin an amazing custom of spiritual awareness in the distinctive Southeastern enviornments.
Sacred Cave is a remarkable achievement in literary awareness and will serve to fill a void in our American prehistoric past that can be richly imagined now.

This would be a fine text for social studies in the middle school grades, but there's not enough story here for adults or older students. There's lots of good info on what people ate and wore in the early days of American tribes in the southeast, but little character development and less of actual human nature. The characters are cardboard cutouts of the noble savage, no one ever competes, disagrees, or gets angry. What emotion there is is told about rather than felt by the characters. The story also depends too much on the supernatural aspects, for example, rather than learn by experimentation or close attention to the environment, they simply "dream" about natural medicines or approaching disasters. Without genuine human qualities, the plot never moves forward of its own.
The author seems uncertain who the target audience is, whether children or adults, so the language is inconsistent. But for children, it may spark an awareness of what it was like to make the things you need and get food from the land.