Customer Reviews

Woman At Otowi Crossing

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The Woman at Otowi Crossing is about a white woman in a mostly Indian and Hispanic community in northern New Mexico who experiences an epiphany which confounds her family and friends. It's hard to explain it in a few words here, but basically she experiences a sudden, shocking insight that all things in the universe are connected in one big whole.

When she tries to relate this experience to her boyfriend, her daughter, and the scientific community at Los Alamos, they have a hard time grasping what she's trying to express. As time goes by, however, she becomes a mythic figure to many people.

This book is written with a lot of detail about places and atmospheres, but doesn't get bogged down in it. The development of the atom bomb is a central metaphor relating directly to the main characters' lives. I could not put the book down.

Flavor of the region near Taos in the time of transition of Los Alamos from an isolated boys' school to a nuclear weapons lab. Charming, gripping mysticism and sociology of local Indian mentality. Very good reading. Fabrication based on history, the real story (The House at Otowi Bridge) is less romantic and less gripping but equally interesting. I read both with pleasure.

I know the granddaughter of the main character of this book doesn't like it, however, it does add to the endearment of her, to many who might not have learned about her and her awesome story, had it not been published in this fanciful and wishful thinking novel! I've read Ms. Churche's book and enjoyed it just as much, as with the "other" book of poetry, "In the Shadow of Los Alamos". I truly enjoyed all three books!

This is an amazing story, well told. Waters maintains a dramatic tension between the inner psycho-spiritual awakening of the Woman at Otowi crossing and the nearby highly secretive operations by the Federal Government. In entirely different ways, the Government's secret work and the awakening of the woman at Otowi Crossing, both impact the world at large. After reading this book I want to read the historical information on which it is based.