We Minnesota writers by and large get our literary inspiration from the craggy promontories of Lake Superior and the pine rimmed lakes of our endless northern forests.
And it makes sense. Who is not inspired by the waves crashing on the rocky shoreline of the greatest of the Great Lakes or the haunting call of a loon over placid sunset waters?
But somewhere along the way something unexpected happened to me: I encountered the Dakotas, and that turned my eyes to the west and changed my life forever.
I could not have imagined this. North Dakota had always meant nothing to me but farms and tractors and endless miles of boredom. And South Dakota was four stone heads carved into a mountain, and nothing else. These were not places that fired the imagination. They were places you avoided. Time spent there was a penance.
But when we moved to northwestern Minnesota, just at the margin where the forests give way to the broad expanses of the prairies, the Dakotas began to whisper to me. Instead of being drawn east to the loons and canoe country of our northern lakes and pines, I found myself being pulled magnetically into the vast openness of the plains and prairies to the west.
And what was it in this Dakota landscape that was drawing me?
Consider:
It is in the Dakotas that you first feel America turning its back on the forests and woodlands of the east and reorienting its spirit toward the west. It is in the Dakotas where those settlers, confident in the power of the plow and hard labor, first had to gasp and stare out at an arid landscape and admit that their Biblical belief in tilling the land and making it bear fruit was too small a vision. It is in the Dakotas where the sky first becomes bigger than the land and where dinosaur bones poke out through the earth. And it is in the Dakotas where the spirit of Native American not only resonates, but dominates.
Once I opened myself to these larger forces, there was no turning back.
So when it came time for me to write Lone Dog Road, the novel that had been percolating inside me for so long, it was only natural that I should set it in the land that had so touched my spirit and fired my imagination.
Soon enough you will have Lone Dog Road in your hands. My solid and steady publisher, New World Library, has it scheduled for a March release, and this time that is rock solid.
It is my paean to our Western myth and the hard reality that lives beneath it, and the folks, Native and non-Native, who live, love, and struggle on this land that captures something so fundamental in our American spirit.
In the next few installments I will introduce you to some of these people. I will also give you a look at the cover of the book as it evolves, because I love having you all involved in the process of the book’s creation. After all, it was you by your voting and comments who gave me the title, Lone Dog Road.
And, lastly, I will offer you a way to sign up to be among the first to have Lone Dog Road as your book club selection, which will include a ZOOM visit with me and your group.
This has been a long time in coming, and it is going to be fun.
looking forward to the journey.
Yá’át’ééh Ahé’hee for your words. Looking forward to Lone Dog Road. Be well
Ahó
Melanie
You are already fueling my imagination. Can’t wait!
Kent, what if you posted the first chapter of your book? And maybe do additional chapters occasionally until the book is published?
I own every book you have written! I have been anxiously waiting for your next book. I am Native American and love the truths about our lives your books have told!
see my email, Marc
Looking forward a bit and visioning your new book to keep me company in March, when the long winter is beginning to retreat. It’s been a long wait.
I’ll forego my normally long comment, for obviously brevity isn’t my best suit and just say, “Through your books I can envision the Dakota landscape and its people intimate relationship with it. “Lone Dog Road” will not disappoint.”
I’ve been reading and reading again your past musings . . . indeed they are of the Muse.
Your words, they are holy.
I look forward to walking Lone Dog Road with you.
I live on the other side of the pond in the small kingdom of Denmark. And I had the good karma of meeting a Native American medicine man here in Copenhagen of all places. And for a while I was his apprentice. That changed my life – he changed my life. He taught me how to open my heart, gosh – did I cry. He taught me to stay in the center of my own circle. He touched my soul.
He told me, that the Elders had a vision that when the white man came with the sword in one hand and the cross, without the circle, in the other – that would be the end of the road for the red people . . . when I read your books it touches the deep pain of knowing what the white Christian man has done to the Native peoples all over the world.
I have studied many of the world’s different faiths and beliefs, but I always come back to the Native American’s teachings, the Original People of America. It is so infused with wisdom, truth, beauty, humour and lack of self-importance. We could learn so much from them and their deep respect of the Sacred and of Mother Earth (though they never studied in a University). It could change and save our world, if we would only listen.
I recognize all this wisdom and beauty in your sacred books – and the pain inflicted on them by us. Tears are flowing – though my heart sings.
Thank you for telling us, for being a messenger.
With respect and love, Kirsten Elizabeth