Spirit Mound: A Novel of Ancient Ireland [Paperback]

Richard F. Fleck (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 11, 2005

Spirit Mound is a novel that focuses on the building of Newgrange burial mound 5,000 years ago in periglacial Ireland when ancient tribes gathered in the Boyne River Valley to form a communal alliance consisting of the wheat tribe, the heron tribe and the wolf tribe, who were farmers, fishers and hunters. Oonah, chief of the wolf tribe, receives visions to build a spirit connector in which ashes of the deceased were to be placed in an inner chamber. There, during each winter solstice, the sun's rays would energize the spirits to come forth and communicate with the living up to our own time. Three generations of tribesmen completed the construction of Newgrange, or Bru Na Boinne. Oonah, his son and grandson all communicate with much later humans, including a Roman centurion and later an American Indian visitor, each on a quest for spiritual unity.

Product Details

• Paperback: 202 pages
• Publisher: PublishAmerica (April 11, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1413765335
• ISBN-13: 978-1413765335
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,364,270 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Richard F. Fleck's first published work, Palms, Peaks and Prairies, was published in 1967 when he was a young professor of English at the University of Wyoming. After twenty-five years (1965-1990) of teaching literature at this university on the high plains of Wyoming and publishing numerous books including Henry Thoreau and John Muir Among the Indians and Critical Perspectives on Native American Literature and introductions to trade paperback editions of the writings of Thoreau and Muir, he and his wife Maura moved to Denver where he became a college dean on the Auraria Campus until his retirement. During this period of time (1990-2001) he published A Colorado River Reader (2000) and in retirement wrote and published a collection of his mountaineering essays Breaking Through the Clouds (2005). Since this book, he has written and collected his mountain poems now appearing in the online edition of Climbing Magazine and can be seen at www.climbing.com/mountains_on_my_mind . His new mountaineering, biographical and literary essays as well as his short fiction can be seen online at www.hubpages.com/juneaukid He also served as Senior Fellow at the University of Bologna, Italy during the spring semester, 2005. His Thoreau papers are housed at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods (www.walden.org)where he gave a reading and signing of Breaking Through the Clouds a few seasons ago. He is married with 3 children and 7 grandchildren.