Readings

Events, General, Readings

New & Dazzling

Posted on by Margaret C. Murray

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New from WriteWords Press

A dazzling travel memoir… 

 

 

EAST, A Woman on the Road to Kathmandu
EAST, A Woman on the Road to Kathmandu

EAST: A Woman on the Road to Kathmandu

by  Shelley Buck

 

 

I’m so happy to be offered the chance to introduce Shelley Buck at her book launch for EAST at Diesel bookstore in Oakland. I am her publisher, after all! And what a wonderful high-flying ride I’ve had helping Shelley to bring EAST to print, like watching a kite in the wind.  Shelley will be reading selections from EAST, recreating her travels (of the mind and spirit as well as body) from Oakland through Europe, Greece, Turkey, Iraq and beyond.   I will also be reading from my novel, Dreamers.  It would be great to see you there too.

Book Launch  at Diesel Bookstore

Sunday, October 13, 3 PM

5433 College Ave.

Oakland, CA 94618

707-829-1181

Admission Free

Shelley Buck, Author
Shelley Buck, Author

East is the true story of one woman’s overland journey across Asia. Inspired by a book purchased at Fred and Pat Cody’s legendary bookstore on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue, Shelley Buck took off alone in 1972 on a journey she hoped would take her from England to India and Nepal by public transit. East chronicles that journey and Shelley’s emergence into adulthood.

Following her return to California, Shelley Buck became a founding editor of the feminist news syndicate, Her Say, now archived at Harvard. Shelley currently edits ePícaro.com—an online journal of travel narratives. When not breakfasting with white-faced monkeys in Costa Rica, or hitchhiking through the Khyber Pass, Shelley lives with her family in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains.

EARLY PRAISE FOR EAST

“She captures a bygone time and place when young people took to the road, crossing the Bosphorus and then the steppes and deserts of the Middle East, to the Indus Valley and the Himalayan foothills beyond, often by public transport. Buck’s unique vantage point as a female traveler who refused to be deterred by those who said she couldn’t or shouldn’t travel on her own across lands now long-closed by war, makes for riveting reading.” —Judith Pierce Rosenberg, author of A Swedish Kitchen

“A compelling read, sensitively written by an informed and courageous woman. I felt that I was taken along, tucked inside her backpack.”—Nancy Pringle, Eureka, California

For more, see www.shelleybuck.com.

EAST Book Launch @ Diesel Bookstore
Sunday, October 13, 3 PM
5433 College Ave.
Oakland, CA 94618
707-829-1181

General, Readings

Dungeons & Dragons: Reading in My Old Hometown

Posted on by Margaret C. Murray
Reading at Awesome Books

This was to be my first ever reading in my old hometown of Pittsburgh, PA and I was returning not only for this event but also for the reunion of Sacred Heart High School, Class of 1962. I’d be reading from my latest novel, Dreamers, A Coming of Age Love Story of the ‘60s, a story that echoes and frames my own childhood like an old family photo album.

The sky was a perfect blue, made bluer by the  white puffy clouds floating between skyscrapers.  My son, Jonas, also participating in the reading, led me down historic Liberty St toward Awesome Books. The light through the fall leaves on the tree-lined sidewalk radiated with pure possibility. A Columbus Day Parade was marching by as we walked into the bookstore for the first time.

Dan of Awesome Books and me

Awesome Book Store is a small, vintage, independent bookstore, classical in style. Every item–counter, cash register, bookshelves, tables, chairs, and the books themselves–was carefully placed for maximum artistic effect. There was an old typewriter casually positioned on a small wicker chair below a framed sign promoting future book events. Large, well-shined wood tables held all the latest titles of books I yearned to read.

Where would I be reading? The Awesome clerk, Dan, motioned me to a door, part way open, in the back where the event would be held. Inside I found a dark room, dreary, nearly empty too, cold and gray and windowless with a swath of scribbled brown paper on one wall, a bookshelf, a mirror and lots of boxes. It reminded me of the old coal cellar in the basement of my house on Foliage St. There was a small circle of green folding chairs set up surrounding a circular card table below one overhead light bulb.

The starkness emphatically spoke to the economic precariousness of independent bookstores working on a shoestring in this age of corporate, internet book aggregates.

This was not a medieval dungeon such as appears in any popular fantasy novel. It could have been Les Miserables, La Boheme or another romantic musical. Yet it felt so familiar and spoke to those deep stark roots where Annie and Thomas, the main characters in Dreamers were born. Maybe it was that dungeon where I locked myself in all those years conjuring up Dreamers I thought.

But even so, a dungeon is a dungeon, but dragons are both different and personal. My dragons were spewing their usual fire, taunting me with gloomy predictions; you’ll have no audience, no books sold. You’ll fall flat on your face. You’ll get dizzy and confused. And so on. The flames were full of general, debilitating angst.

Still, looking around, I realized that this small room reminded me of something else–the dark, cold inner circle of the Native American sweat lodge that I write about in Sundagger.net. It would be empty too, barren and cold before the door was shut, before the hot stones were brought in, and before the singing and drumming began. Here appearances meant nothing.

Reaching to the Awesome Audience

This was a place of purification, where all distractions were eliminated, where all that mattered was the story.

I began my reading by saying, “You are my hardest audience.” Oh, I could feel those dragons hanging from my neck. Facing those classmates of long ago and my family from far away, you could say I had more to lose here than in any other place I had read.

But my dragons were just ghosts. The audience filled the room in a very big and inspiring way, like the sky outside on that beautiful October day. I had no doubt we were together again for a reason.  Listening to my son bring alive the powerful role of Thomas, I felt free of both dragons and dungeons too, transported into that space where I wrote the book. It was the ‘60s again, when the Civil Rights Movement was at its height, when all was romance, epic and life-changing, and dreaming was as common as breath. I had come home at last.

Events, General, Readings

Music of the ’60s to Read By

Posted on by Margaret C. Murray

In my book readings, I’ll be calling up the power of  music as well as story. I’m having several book readings coming up and I’m including music I’m wild about. Great music from the ’60s, music I’ve been listening to with stars in my eyes still.  Yes, and the words too mean something still. Like this song.

This is the music the characters in my novel, Dreamers, listen to also. Like  “So Long, Marianne” by Leonard Cohen.

As I wrote Dreamers, I heard music all the time.  I put that music into the book. There’s 32 pieces of music mentioned, classical titles, pop and rock & roll, plus other genres. Think of Elvis, Arethra Franklin,the Beatles, Dylan, Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, Judy Collins, Simon and Garfunkel and The Youngbloods.  Remember this one “House of the Rising Sun”?

Dreamers is full of music. My next reading  is June 21st, Thursday night, in Boulder Creek, CA a sixties town if I ever saw one. I’m reading from the first scene in the book which begins with Annie sitting in the Pittsburgh International Airport waiting for Thomas to arrive. It’s 2008 and she hasn’t seen him  in nearly forty years.  A song by folk artists Peter, Paul and Mary is playing over the airport loudspeakers. Here’s what it might have been. John Denver, the composer, is  singing along too.

Dreamers takes place in 1966 when Thomas arrives back home at Christmas after five years away in New York City, trying to make it as an actor. Returning to his family home, he hears his sisters and son listening to WAMO,  a radio station in Pittsburgh. Back in 1966, there wasn’t any hip hop just a lot of R&B, blues, jazz and pop too.

When Thomas’ Momma arrives home that evening from church choir practice, she laments that Thomas should have been there with her to sing “Amazing Grace”. Here’s a powerful version of that traditional spiritual. Amazing Grace by the Soweto Gospel Choir, South Africa

Also in Dreamers are Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, Handel and other classical composers that Annie, majoring in violin, knows well. In one of the first scenes I read from, Annie’s coming out of the Pittsburgh Playhouse, having just seen an outrageous production of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream put on by the Negro Ensemble Company of New York. As in Shakespeare’s time, all the actors playing women are men–black men in this case, shocking casting in the volatile Civil Rights Era of America. Annie has the music of Mendelssohn gliding through her head as she steps out into the cold, Pittsburgh night.

No wonder  when Annie passes a tall, dark, handsome man on her way up a snowy Pittsburgh hill, she mistakes Thomas for the  actor playing the King of the Fairies, Oberon.

In my book readings this summer, I’ll be calling up the power of  music as well as story.  And just for this Thursday, we’ll be having our own Midsummer Night’s solstice ceremony. Here comes the sun! By you know who, The Beatles.

 

Check out all my upcoming events. There’s music in them!

 

Events, General, Press Release, Readings

Storybook & Literature Festival Free!

Posted on by Margaret C. Murray
Northern California Storytelling & Literature Festival

Northern California Storybook &Literature Festival Returns Saturday, April 14th

 

I am honored to be one of the authors featured in the 2nd annual Northern California Storybook and Literature Festival.  Come celebrate books, reading and literacy with me. Experience  Native Californian Maidu culture too. It’s all happening at the Maidu Library and Community Center in Roseville (The Maidu Museum is within walking distance). And it all takes place on Saturday, April 14th from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.

I will be speaking on the Fiction panel from 11:30 to 12:30PM.  Click on this program to see all the scheduled events and panels.

Me and Dreamers

On the Fiction Panel, I’ll be asking and answering your questions. Perhaps I’ll speak about my background growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the shadow of the very first Carnegie Library where I was, in effect, saved by books. Or I’ll share my  experience writing and publishing with a small press: How my latest published novel, Dreamers, a Coming of Age Love Story of the ’60s, was written over too many years. How a ruined dwelling in the Southwest desert led me to write my first novel, Sundagger.net, a Story of One Family, Two Worlds and Many Lifetimes. Plot, characters, setting and style also fascinate me so maybe we can talk about that. But more importantly, I’m looking forward to hearing from you–and the books you have loved, written or want to write. We’ll have lots of time to share. Look for me at my booth.

I’ve also invited Shelley Buck, author of Floating Point, to display her memoir so she’ll be there at the display table along with me, talking about her journey “Endlessly Rocking Off Silicon Valley”  on San Francisco Bay and, like me, looking forward to greeting you.

You can find us sitting at the WriteWords Press booth. Come take a look at my novels: Dreamers, A Coming of Age Story of the ’60s and Sundagger.net, a Story of One Family, Two Worlds and Many Lifetimes.  I’ll be happy  to talk about whatever you like. What writer doesn’t want to share their work!

Saturday, April 14th  10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Maidu Library and Community Center
1530 Maidu Drive, Roseville, CA 95661

Along with myself and Shelley, there will be authors from across Northern California, including New York Times bestselling author Deborah Underwood and local Roseville favorites Ann Martin Bowler and Jack L. Parker. These writers have written a variety of children, teen, adult, fiction and non-fiction books.

It’s Free! And there is something for everyone in the family. As well as author panels, the festival also features family entertainment, book signings, free crafts for children, and even advice on how to get published.

Barnes & Noble will handle all book sales and you can purchase delicious sandwiches, fries, etc. from local Drewski’s and coffee, shaved ice, pastries, etc . from Karen’s Coffee  throughout the day.

The Native American Maidu Museum and is close enough that you can walk to it.  The museum is built on the edge of an ancient village site in which Nisenan Maidu people thrived for over 3,000 years, featuring petroglyphs carved into the sandstone boulders.

It’s exciting to be part of this book celebration organized by the Roseville Public Library, Placer County Library and Sacramento Public Library. Plus I get to visit my son, Chris Goslow, and my new daughter-in-law, Charr Crail, who live in Sacramento.

As the City Librarian of Roseville, Natasha Casteel says,“ We hope the entire family will come to get inspired, use their imaginations, and meet the people that create books.”

See you there! It's Free. Stories for everyone!

Directions from Sacramento: Take I-80 east to the Douglas Blvd East exit. Continue heading east on Douglas Blvd. Make a right on Rocky Ridge Drive heading south. Make a left at Maidu Drive into the regional park. 

The Maidu Library is located at 1530 Maidu Dr., Roseville, CA  95661.

For more information, call  (916) 774-5221
On the web: www.roseville.ca.us/LiteratureFest

 

General, Journal, Readings

Searching for Africa: the Other Barack

Posted on by Margaret C. Murray

Kruger National ParkI’m searching for Africa still and I have been ever since I returned from my three week trip in December 2011. Where before my trip I had no desire to learn about this dark continent, not to mention actually visit it, now I am fascinated with all things African, especially the unknown, deep well of African history in all its diversity, the culture and the stories of Africans past and present, ignored or long buried in those extreme, rich, beautiful and striking landscapes.

The Other Obama by Sally H. Jacobs

With that in mind, I picked up The Other Barack by Sally H. Jacobs off the Sonoma County library shelf not because of Barack Sr.’s famous son, President Barack Obama Jr., and not because my novel, Dreamers, ends with Barack Obama receiving the Democratic Nomination for President, but because I hoped this book would speak to me of the mystery that is Africa.

Jacob’s biography is subtitled, “The Bold and Reckless Life of President Obama’s Father”. That does truly describe the “other”, senior Barack Obama. You can see it from his picture on the hardback cover: wide, inviting smile, pipe between his teeth, the stylish ’50s haircut, those black-rimmed glasses accentuating his well-modeled face with high cheekbones, the glasses that reflect light seemingly emanating from the man himself.

“Baraka” means “Blessing” in Arabic. Barack Obama’s ecstatic photo embodies the openhearted exuberance of the people I met while in South Africa last December in the mall at Midland, the market in Roosboom, the bar in Ladysmith, and the caves at the Cradle of Humankind. I will not forget how their faces lit up when I mentioned I was from the United States, how they hugged me and how I loved it. I felt blessed like that photo of Barack on the book cover.

For a native boy from Africa growing up in the 1940s, Barak Obama Sr. achieved the nearly impossible and he knew it better than anyone else.  Shakespeare’s Othello had his jealousy, Sophocles’ Oedipus his blindness. The other Obama had great flaws too. He couldn’t get past his potential and actualize it. But still, what a powerful, inspiring struggle he experienced growing up in Kenya, leaving for America and then returning unwillingly to Kenya as the country finally achieved its independence from British colonial rule. So much was happening to Africa then.

In some ways, The Other Barack by Sally H. Jacobs reads like a flawed Greek tragedy. In a tragedy, a great person experiences the reversal of fortune caused by an inevitable and unforeseen mistake, a flaw in the person him or herself. Witnessing this, the audience experiences a catharsis, a kind of freedom and satisfaction.

Impala in Kruger National Park, South Africa

I did experienced a kind of catharsis after reading this book. And I’m  further along in my search for Africa. One thing I learned is that being fascinated with another culture doesn’t mean you could live in it.

You can find out more about The Other Barack in my book review.

Events, General, Readings

Talk-story in Boulder Creek

Posted on by Margaret C. Murray
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

January’s  a good time for a “talk-story”. This coming Thursday evening (1/12/12) I’ll be at the Luminescence Day Spa in Boulder Creek, CA, drumming and reading from Sundagger.net and Dreamers. If I’m lucky and the stars are aligned, I’ll see a few of you book lovers there too. Perhaps some dreamy mystics or intellectual woodsmen and woodswomen will come to Luminescence from the redwoods of the Santa Cruz mountains or those wild, lonely beaches north of Santa Cruz.  Whatever place  you come from matters, doesn’t it?

Settings–places–are very important to me.  Pittsburgh. Africa. California.  For years I’ve kept a torn piece of paper on my dresser. It reads, “Wisdom resides in places–Basho.”  It grounds me somehow, reminding me to honor the place where I am.

As you listen to my talk-story, you’ll be visiting: Oakland, CA; Chaco Canyon, New Mexico;  Sunnyvale, Silicon Valley, CA; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and New York City.

The sun is also an important theme in my talk-story. I’m seeing a lot of mild, sunny days in Northern California so far this January. But still the sun is a terrible power, as I’ve just experienced. Unhappily, I got sunstroke a month ago after swimming in the Indian Ocean in Durban, South Africa–and it was a gray, cloudy afternoon too.  I turned into a dehydrated limp vegetable for a day or two, but recovered by drinking gallons of sugar & salt water, prescribed by my sister, Mary Pat Brennan. She has been in South Africa working with the Peace Corps for over two years. Her doctoring worked. I’m better.

The sun’s a main character of Sundagger.net, a novel of one family, two worlds and many lifetimes. The title comes from an actual occurrence in Chaco Canyon where sunlight, shaped like a dagger, pierces a spiral cut in stone.

Sun at Winter Solstice Framing Spiral

From the sun dagger phenomenon, it’s apparent that the sun was revered, and likely worshipped, by the primitive Anasazi of the Southwest. In the old world story of Sundagger.net, the Anasazi main character, RoHnaan is charged to spy on the nefarious elders to make sure they are performing the sun dagger ceremony correctly so that the drought will end and rain will come.

We post-moderns of 2012, addicted to electronic media as we are, also idolize the sun. Do we even realize that the sun drives the technology that powers the Internet?

The telecom industry of Silicon Valley, CA,  is the setting for the new world story in Sundagger.net. Rowan, a driven network analyst at the telecom giant,TekGen (and a bastard reincarnation of RoHnaan), stumbles onto a vision he does not understand with a family he does not deserve but desperately tries to keep.

Check out Journey Into the Sun on YouTube for more leading edge sun technology. Sometimes it takes more than one lifetime. Now there’s a talk-story to explore. Maybe we’ll get to that too. See you soon.

Ruins of Great Houses, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

 

Events, General, Readings

I’m grateful for Bernard, my Dreamers launch bookstore manager

Posted on by Margaret C. Murray
Alexander Books, your Indie bookstore in downtown SF

There’s a bumper sticker that reads, “What are you grateful for?”  I’m grateful for my Dreamers launch bookstore events manager. I met Bernard three years ago when I called the Alexander Book Company to see if I might have a book reading (my first ever for Sundagger.net). When I called him this year in July, Bernard said yes again, yes to the book launch, to music, to gourmet chocolate, and to including two more authors, Shelley Buck and Alice Rogoff. Yes, I’m grateful.

This last Friday I met Bernard at the NCIBA (Northern California Independent Booksellers Association) event in Oakland, CA a few streets over from the Occupy Oakland protest, an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street.  Michael Moore had just spoken to us at the NCIBA. He began his talk with some inspiring observations of the Occupy Oakland encampment where he had been barely 30 minutes before, emphasizing the power and inherent hope of democratic protest. His words about the value of books and education, the lack of which leads to fear and manipulation by Wall Street and their corporate employers, really struck a chord with me.

Bernard was on his cell phone when I walked up to him at the Marriott.  A day before, we had made plans to connect after Moore’s talk, but I had left my cell phone in my car. Bernard laughed when I told him how glad I was I could recognize him after so long. Not so hard, he said, referring to the fact that he was one of a very few black men in the audience.

Michael Moore speaking at Occupy Oakland

We both agreed we were high, inspired by  Moore’s talk and OWS movement in general. Speaking for myself, I was higher yet to be with Bernard again. I wanted to give him copies of Dreamers to display in Alexander Book Company’s front window. But I had mistakenly left several books in my car at my friend, Pat’s house where I was staying that night. In fact, it was Pat who Bernard was talking to. Pat was calling to make sure Bernard and I would not miss each other and to let me know he was waiting outside in his SUV with more copies of Dreamers.

I felt so grateful when Bernard said he was hoping to sell all the books I gave him. He asked if I could I get him more? YES! I nearly screamed. When I thanked Bernard for all he was doing, he told me emphatically that anyone who comes into Alexander Book Company comes into his home. Suddenly I felt like I was part of his family.

“You are really a friend,” I told him, hanging over his shoulder, thinking of my book launch and Bernard greeting me on November 10th at the Alexander Book Company.  I’m grateful. What are you grateful for?

 Free! Come to Alexander Books for the Dreamers launch next Thursday and mention this post to receive a free Sundagger.net ebook. Just for you!

Dreamers Book Launch
November 10, 2011
12:30 – 1:30PM
Alexander Book Company
50 Second Street (Between Market & Mission) 
San Francisco, CA 94105
Tel: 415-495-2992

Events, General, Readings

A man hands an envelope to another man across a table–The Sinister Pig

Posted on by Margaret C. Murray

So begins The Sinister Pig (2003) by the late Tony Hillerman, famed mystery writer of the Southwest. The beginning is very simple–a man hands an envelope across the table of a small cafe. The setting is Navajo Country but it could be anywhere, anytime. How mundane. How ordinary. How easy to read. This vintage Tony Hillerman beginning fascinates me–it’s deceptively simple. By the end of the first page, we are in the midst of a high-level corruption and mysterious intrigue.  In my book readings at the Sonoma County libraries on October 14th, November 2nd and 5th, I’ll be talking about this and other beginnings of Tony Hillerman mysteries.

How apt, how perfectly Tony Hillerman’s titles reflect the themes too–By page 9 of Sinister Pig we learn that the term comes from “porc sinistre”, a French phrase for “the boss pig in the sty–the one that would guard the trough and attack any animal that tried to steal a bite.” So how does the title fit in? The man who takes the envelope is someone Slate plans to hire, an ex-CIA agent whose job will be to sniff out who is syphoning oil from a pipeline system, thereby bypassing paying the $40 billion dollars in royalty money into the Interior Department’ trust fund for the Indians.

Ahh, now we know what’s in the trough and who profits by it–the federal government and those underlings who work it. We also know who doesn’t profit–another telling Hillerman theme–Native American history. Not to mention his knack for describing the big picture and the lay of contemporary United States of America where power (and crime) reside with the wealthy and their dishonest corporation underlings, and where the “War on Drugs” means war on its victims and “Protecting the Border” means hoarding the trough of addiction.

The envelope the man hands across the table is full of papers documenting a forged identity for the soon-to-be ex-CIA agent.  We only know him by his assumed name. But don’t worry, we needn’t remember it because, even with his past experience and the fifty thousand Slate transferred to a forged bank account to bankroll him, it isn’t enough to prevent this agent from being murdered by the end of the first chapter.

Which brings me to another characteristic of Tony Hillerman–murder is executed in the blink of an eye, a turn of the sentence, almost a bloodless and ghostly affair. I’ll be talking about his depiction of crime, murder and its victims too.

Now let’s look at his characters. They’re all familiar to us–Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police, the retired “legendary lieutenant” Joe Leaphorn, and Chee’s down-in-the mouth girlfriend, Bernadette Manuelito, who has recently taken a job as a Customs Control Officer, posted on the Border to Mexico just to get away from Chee. Hillerman’s characters are like family–quirky, stubborn, true-to-life, and long-suffering. Mostly they’re downright sympathetic. After all, we know them well and we’re rooting for them. We believe he is rooting for them too.

In an organic way, The Sinister Pig promotes Native American values through the characters and also through the action; but how many of us know what these values are? The climax of my novel Sundagger.net happens during a vision quest in New Mexico, but I myself didn’t really understand how Native American tribes of the Southwest would view a vision quest ceremony until Tony Hillerman advised me in his letters. At the library event, I’ll be reading scenes from Sundagger.net that illustrate how I made use of his advice.

Then there are all those other Tony Hillerman themes: his sonorous desert landscapes, the technical specifics of industries such as natural gas and oil, all those pipelines, and his stylistic brilliance in using metaphor, understatement and cryptic dialogue to further an increasingly complex plot. We can talk about this in The Sinister Pig and other Hillerman novels.

So come join me at a Sonoma library and bring your favorite book or excerpt. Read a paragraph or two aloud. The anniversary of his death is coming up this month. Let’s all enjoy and commemorate Tony Hillerman together.


 

 

 

Events, General, Readings

Honoring Tony Hillerman

Posted on by Margaret C. Murray

If you‘re like me, you loved all the Tony Hillerman books.  To honor this famed mystery writer of the Southwest, I’m having library readings at Sonoma County libraries and I’d like to invite you.  As you see, I already had one reading event on September 16th–thank you to everyone who came. It was inspiring!

Margaret C. Murray Reading in Honor of Tony Hillerman

Tony Hillerman (May 27, 1925–October 26, 2008) was an award-winning American author of detective novels and non-fiction works best known for his Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels set in the Southwest. I was very honored that he agreed to endorse my first novel, Sundagger.net, an endorsement that appears on the cover of my book.

When I had finished writing my first draft of Sundagger.net, set in the Four Corners area of New Mexico, I wrote to him to ask his opinion and thus began a correspondence that lasted until he died. I think of him as my teacher, my mentor, and my ally.  As a writer in the world, I want to be how Tony Hillerman was with me–funny, open, giving, generous, very knowledgeable, encouraging, and insistent on practice as the key to success. “Keep on writing” he told me in his letters more than once.

Tony Hillerman influenced me long before I wrote Sundagger.net. In particular, I was drawn to his stark, evocative descriptions of the Four Corners area where the four Southwest states converge–New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. There he set his Jim Chee-Joe Leaphorn mysteries, dipping in and out of  Navajo and Hopi landscapes to unveil and eliminate crime.

Tony Hillerman was the master of crafting a fascinating story. For me, all these 29 books were an “easy” read, pure enjoyment, that put me in touch with the pleasure of life. His Native American characters especially were quirky, comfortable, the kind of down-home people you could relate to–at times grumpy, jealous, self-serving, duty-driven, burdened with work, love lost, but in the end, bigger than all that and always very human. And women held a place of honor and respect.

All the Tony Hillerman mysteries unveiled a Native American point-of-view that opened my eyes to a different, deeper world. Touching on reservation life, they described traditional Navajo ceremonies and medicine men, attitudes toward death and burial, as well as political and social issues that affect us all in the bigger community, for example, the stealing of antiquities, illegal aliens, drug dealing across borders, and the embezzlement of billions owed by the federal government to the Indian nation.

Each book embraced a dimension I can only describe as quietly spiritual, based on venerating the magnificence of sky and earth. This was recently illustrated in a new coffee-table photography book, Tony Hillerman’s Landscape, written by his daughter, Anne Hillerman, that I refer to in my reading events.

Here’s a letter Tony Hillerman wrote me that I display on an overhead projector. In it, he points out different attitudes of the Navajo about modern individuality based on their Changing Woman origination story. What Changing Woman might think of a vision questAfter receiving this letter, I revised a chapter in Sundagger.net where a group from the San Francisco area set out on a camping trip to experience a vision quest of their own and end up in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, home of the ancient Anasazi. During my event, I talk about the letter and read sections from the chapter.

Please join me to honor a master of story-telling.

You are  invited to bring your favorite Hillerman book–and  to read an excerpt aloud to our audience.

Hope to see you at the library!

FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE.

 

Events, General, Readings

Special Event Music & Reading at Infusions Teahouse

Posted on by Margaret C. Murray

Someone close to you just have a birthday? My granddaughter, Emma,did. Her mother is having hers next Saturday. Someone in your family getting married soon? Having a baby? Leaving home? Someone starting school? Emma’s starting kindergarten and her big sister Sophie’s going into second grade. Maybe this sounds a little like your family. We all have relatives.

Let’s celebrate with a Special “All My Relatives”Musical Event & Reading at Infusions Teahouse. Come join Chris Goslow and me. Relax and enjoy dinner, fine tea and chocolate during an evening of music and readings featuring performances by musical entertainer Chris Goslow and Sebastopol’s own, author Margaret Murray.

Saturday, September 10th
6:30-8:30PM
Infusions Teahouse
at Whole Foods Center
6988 McKinley Street
Sebastopol, CA 95472
707-829-1181

Maddingly clever, soothing and entertaining music
by pianist and music artist Chris Goslow.

 

 

Margaret Murray reading from Sundagger.net,
a story of one family, two worlds, and many lifetimes.

 

 

 

Plus sneak preview reading from her new novel Dreamers, an interracial romance of the ’60s.

Free Gravenstein Apples at the door!