more About the Author

I have always been fascinated with indigenous cultures living close to the earth, particularly Native Americans, and as a little girl used to play “Indian” in the woods of Frick Park in Pittsburgh with my cousins.

I loved “old bones,” envisioning a whole story in a stone, a stick, a picture scratched on a rock. I loved the adventure in reading about archeological discoveries, seeing them as the true signature of the past. When I went to Sligo, Ireland looking for my Irish roots at twenty-one, I found a bone in a cairn said to be human and over four thousand years old. I call this bone my ancestor.

After my divorce, I was low in spirits and looking for meaning in my life. I went to women’s drumming circles and took comfort in researching pre-western and women-centered cultures. I began to attend Native American sweats and other Indian ceremonies, finding peace and harmony in the ritualized way to celebrate community and reverence for life.

In 1999 I visited the Four Corners area in the Southwest and Chaco Canyon World Monument. The mystery of the canyon ruins, the shadow of roads networking through the brutal and beautiful desert, the sun dagger phenomenon itself, all called to me, inspiring me to research Pre-Puebloan culture and begin Sundagger.net.

What I felt in Chaco Canyon touched me in a powerful way. I wanted to write a story that reaches across the barriers of time, space, and national origin, intersecting and contrasting the disparate cultures of the indigenous Anasazi and our frenetic contemporary life.

picture2I made the sun my main character as it was for the Anasazi and as it is for us, powering our internet technology. I used the Native American sweat lodge ceremony as the portal allowing the main character, Sara, to bring her family together and to find love.