Shaman Winter [Hardcover]

Rudolfo A. Anaya (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1999

Famed for portraying the full flavor of New Mexico, Rudolfo Anaya has been hailed as the godfather of Chicano literature in English. Now this "extraordinary storyteller" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) brings back his charismatic gumshoe Sonny Baca in an exciting new mystery set in the dangerous season of SHAMAN WINTER.

Wheelchair-bound after a brutal battle with his archenemy Raven, Sonny's days have been spent in slow recovery while his nights have been tormented by strange dreams......

The year is 1958. Owl Woman, daughter of a shaman, will enter New Mexico with Oate's colonists as an angel of peace: one who carries dreams. In her hands, she bears a mysterious bowl. It is the Calendar of Dreams, the key to fate, without which there is no future. She has brought it to her groom on her wedding night - only to be abducted.

In this haunting landscape of his dreams Sonny Baca witnesses this, even as he hears the dream-shaman who implores him to find Owl Woman. He knows he must listen.

The world of spirits is the world of dreams, says Sonny's mentor, Don Eliseo. A wise elder and keeper of the past, he reveals that Owl Woman was Sonny's ancestor, and that the man who carried her off was none other than Raven, the Bringer of Curses. Raven has entered Sonny's dreams with one murderous agenda: to capture his soul by destroying his history.

Thus the nightmares rage on. One by one, in dream after dream...century after century....Sonny's ancestors disappear. And in order to fight Raven, he must be initiated into the realm of the spirit.

In his waking life Sonny is hired to find the mayor's daughter - kidnapped the night she stars in a Christmas pageant. To his horror he discovers four black feathers on the vanished teen's pillow - the mark of Raven. Before long, another girl disappears. But what is the connection between the vanishing girls and the women in Sonny's dreams?

A series of devastating revelations soon leads Sonny to uncover a plot by Raven that could bring down the city...the nation....and the world.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Continuing the classic Bless Me, Ultima: Sonny Baca battles his nemesis, Raven.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Can Raven, Bringer of Curses, whose battle cry is ``Chaos forever,''outfight small-town p.i. Sonny Baca? In your dreams. Which is where most of the action in this weird blend of crime and fantasy fiction takes place. The thing is, Raven (Amaya's devil figure) and Sonny (his angel) have wrestled before (Rio Grande Fall, 1996, etc.), with the devil taking the hindmost. But this time, Raven feels sure he has the edge: he knows how to get into Sonny's dreamsand Sonny isn't savvy enough yet to invade his. That's important, because it means Raven can wipe out Sonny's female forebears, starting with Owl Woman, daughter of a shaman, who lived circa 1598. The strategic point here is that by canceling their existence, he fixes it so that Sonny was never born! In between dream battle-scenes (in which the likes of Billy the Kid and Pancho Villa sometimes take a hand), Raven and Sonny have waking confrontations. Sonny, still wheelchair-bound as the result of Ravens malevolence in a previous novel, is often bested here. But he's recovering his health. And with the help of wise old Don Eliseo, his mentor, he's sharpening up his dream-crashing techniques, so that he can meet Raven on equal terms and knock the feathers off him. With Sonny Baca we're light-years from the wisecracking, hard-boiled, noir-drenched p.i.s who walked the mean streets when the genre was young. Sam Spade may be turning over in his dreams. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Warner Books; 1ST edition (February 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446523747
• ISBN-13: 978-0446523745
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,420,168 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rudolfo Anaya is professor emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico. He was one of the first winners of the Premio Quinto Sol National Chicano literary award. Winner of the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction for his novel Alburquerque, he is best-loved for his classic bestseller Bless Me, Ultima. His other works include Zia Summer, Rio Grande Fall, Jalamanta, Tortuga, Heart of Aztlan , and The Anaya Reader. He has also written numerous short stories, essays, and children's books, including The Farolitos of Christmas and Maya's Children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AN AFFECTING MEMOIR - JOYFUL AND POIGNANT, December 22, 2000

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Harvest Son: Planting Roots in American Soil (Paperback)

A third generation Japanese-American, agriculturist David Masumoto farms peaches and raisins. He celebrates nature, savoring seasons when "The air is filled with the smell of drying grapes - a caramel fragrance mixed with an earthy aroma."

He is a champion of hard work, viewing calluses as "badges of honor earned only after years in the fields,...The hands tell a story of worth..."

And, as evidenced in his affecting memoir, Harvest Son, he is an author whose fluid pen scrolls as gracefully as kanji, the ancient Japanese script in which each word is a picture. Evocative descriptions of abundant harvests and the delicately limned shade of a near-ripe peach are lyric testimony that farming is not only his occupation, it is his modus vivendi.

Writing with spare yet lustrous precision, Mr. Masumoto traces his life's journey in flashbacks, exploring the past to chart his future. Having learned that in 1942 his grandparents, along with some 16,000 Japanese-Americans were relocated to internment camps, Mr. Masumoto embarked on a painful quest, searching the Arizona desert for traces of the Gila River Relocation Center, his family's four-year home. "A few low cement pillars sunken into the ground" and "a pile of broken thick white dishes" were the only remnants of those interrupted lives.

Another pilgrimage was to Japan, where he found his grandmother's brother. Held hostage by rice paddies, his uncle's farmhouse "looked like the face of an old man with wrinkles and age spots." The floor was of packed earth..." But, blessings of all blessings, there was the "ofuro" or Japanese hot tub, which "Following a day in the fields, ...tempered worn and broken spirits. The soothing water fostered a benevolence and a feeling of optimism."

Mr. Masumoto eventually returned to the California valley of his childhood, where he found satisfaction and a connectedness in tending the vines planted by his grandfathers. From the author we learn a Japanese word "shoganai" meaning "it can't be helped." This is a word borne of forbearance, we are told, as despite their painful past Japanese-Americans accepted their new country "with a bow of humility. Not weakness but silent strength."

When a surprise hailstorm destroyed what promised to be a bumper crop, Mr. Masumoto asked himself why he continued to farm. His answer may be "shoganai."

Today, Mr. Masumoto is a leader in his local Buddhist community, one of the few sansei or third generation Japanese-Americans who remain in the farmland that nurtured them. It is left to him to serve as chairman at many funerals, as one generation honors another. Harvest Son is a joyful, poignant reminder that it is both duty and privilege to do so.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific follow up, June 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Harvest Son: Planting Roots in American Soil (Paperback)

After reading EPITAPH FOR A PEACH, I hungrily hunted down HARVEST SON. This is nature writing at it's finest! At once a touching and poetic account of family life on an organic peach farm and vineyard. The reader is likely to run the gamut of emotions as Masumoto describes losing a crop of peaches to a damaging and wicked storm, makes a pilgrimmage to Japan to learn of his family's history and culture, or has a blast while fertilizing young peach trees "by hand" - his wife and son riding with him on the back of a wagon throwing organic fertilizer at the trees with old coffee cans. His 10 year old daughter jerks them along as she learns to drive the tractor. HARVEST SON is a warm, funny and insightful book that will not disappoint!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dream World Mystery, May 26, 2002

By 

Neil Scott Mcnutt (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shaman Winter (Mass Market Paperback)

This is the third book in the series by Anaya involving his heros Sonny Baca and Rita Lopez and their battles with Sonny's opponent Raven. To appreciate this book, you really need to start at the beginning and follow the story through the various phases. The first book "Zia Summer" sets the stage with the principal characters in the context of the New Mexico Pueblo Indian culture. The second book "Rio Grande Fall" takes you through the battles of Sonny and Raven in the context of the multiple layers of culture (Native American, Hispanic and Anglo) in the Rio Grande Valley. You get a wonderful tour of the cultures in each of these books. This third book "Shaman Winter" is the height of the mystical battle and the Pueblo Indian cultures interpretation of dreams. In this book there also is more of a direct message to the Nuevo Mexicano people that your existence is destroyed by those who rob you of your dreams and who rob you of your historical context. "History belongs to those who write it." Certainly this is a powerful message to the Hispanic people who must feel acutely the loss of their heritage in the Anglo culture and the denial of their dreams of a homeland and a peaceful existance. One of the most powerful moments in the book is the depiction of the Long Walk of the Navaho people and the impact on their women. This is conscience-raising but not distracting from the story line. The story is fascinating in the mystical interpretation of dreams. You have to be willing to suspend disbelief and go along for the ride to enjoy this story. If your are able to do so, the journey is a wonderful one, full of twists, and goes off like the finale of a July 4th fireworks display in all the plots and subplots at the dramatic ending. Note that the ending leaves room to look forward to another book in the series.