Coming Soon to a Website Near You

"Amazon Breaking a Savage Horse",
 1843, bronze, by Jean-Jacques Feuchère
                                     ---Wikipedia

I have written a memoir.

The release will be as an e-book
and soft cover book at Xlibris.com
(and later on Amazon and similar sites).
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Here is an excerpt from
the Introduction:

      I have come to feel suspended in the air, observing my own life from a tall perch. My story is a tree that reaches out with gnarly cottonwood branches, scattering green seeds with wet cotton centers far from the bosque. Descending from the heavens, one seed lands ever so gently inside the boundaries of Indian country. The future alights safely, finding sacred space near a muddy and meandering river. Winds of time spin around before leaving this soul firmly ensconced among the wild things that grow in the desert southwest.

It all begins before I was born. Nature’s magic brought indigenous people of the Americas together with Spanish settlers who arrived in my home state in the 16th century. Then, in 1846, the United States of America inducted us mestizos into the army of American citizens.

My own drumbeat echoes oft-repeated anecdotes from decades of conversation with family and friends. It begins with those who preceded me. It moves on to memories of home life. Then, it’s off to school and a law office, continuing to a time of doggedly prosaic routine and soaring reveries. From the call to adventure, to my latest quest for bliss, I am happy to be living life fully and with purpose, though far from what I had once envisioned.

In 2011, a maternal DNA test informed me that I am descended from Native Americans. Without that momentous sampling of body tissue, I would never have guessed my own genetic background. Among my ancestors were Spanish settlers of Catholic and crypto-Jewish background. My assimilated and college-educated parents raised me to be proud of a strong Hispanic heritage. Come to find out that while a few Spaniards and other Europeans contributed genes and cultural roots, bloodlines do not lie. My maternal DNA identifies me as a Native American. Who knew?