Mother's Blessing - Hardcover

nd her baby, Four Cries, are cast out of the village when a wise man's prophecy--that Pretty One's son will grow up to be a great leader--is proven false because the infant is a girl. Four Cries, in her search for her spirit guide makes many allies, ultimately uniting three enemy villages and helping her own people avoid starvation--and fulfilling the prophecy!

Grade 6-8-- In prehistoric southern California, the birth of a chief's daughter (instead of the expected son) precipitates the exile of the child and her mother, and enmity between two villages. The two find shelter in a remote valley with a wise woman feared by the villagers, and the girl grows up self-confident and skilled with the bow. Eventually, in quest of her spirit guide, she travels to the area we call New Mexico, finds the guide she has foreseen, and learns that she is the powerful leader awaited by her people. This plot is the novel's strong point. Its weaknesses are technical. There is a tendency for characters to describe or explain their native customs to each other, as well as some anachronistic attitudes or assumptions. Most damaging, however, is the flatness of the writing. The characters seldom come alive; the heroine is as schematic as the generic names (``Child,'' ``New Woman'') she bears. She never has enough emotion or personality to make her supposed falling in love at the end credible. The language isn't clumsy, just thin: opportunities for vivid description are missed, and when the heroine speculates on her spirit guide she thinks, banally, ``He must be nice.'' Mother's Blessing is apprentice work, but shows potential, and readers interested in the anthropological or early Native American material may overlook the lack of style and technical flaws. --Patricia Dooley, University of Washington, Seattle
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