Silent Partners is an eco-spiritual adventure novel that has been highly successful at combining spiritual wisdom with environmental and social issues. While the story plot alone is enough to keep the reader’s attention fully engaged throughout, it is also highly entertaining, captivating and offers a story that has meaning, depth and vision. The story line alone would make a block-busting and influential movie script as it lifts important questions into popular consciousness, which must be considered and answered by all, as we realize that what we do to the least affects the whole.
This book is for you, if you enjoy being entertained while at the same time feeling like your worldview is joyfully being fed and expanded, a book that can leave you with a new hope for the future. The narrative glows with a social consciousness that identifies real routes for change amid the narrow ambitions of corporate interests embroiled with government power too often to the detriment of all people.
Excerpt:
THE EVERGREEN TREES are thick in this area of the forest; their slender trunks spaced sufficiently apart, permitting me to squeeze between them as I walk. The dense canopy of needled branches allows little light to penetrate the forest floor, thus the presence of this bright green moss that carpets my way. Bending down, I pat the floor covering like I would the head of a small child.
Caressing the moss with my bare hand, I congratulate myself for returning home to the First Nation Reserve. I laugh at the thought of people being shocked at hearing of my Native roots. Their usual response being, ‘But you don’t look Native!’ My simple reply: ‘I’m not!’
Proceeding through the growth of spruce and cedars, I reach an old road or what was once a road. Now it is only an opening through the thick spruce grove that follows the swamp. It takes on the appearance of a tunnel with two dimly lit entrances. The closest entrance, 100 feet ahead, reminds me of a new and uncertain beginning that is close at hand. The opposite entrance, 100 yards back, conjures up images of one particular day that began the cycle that I am now on.
This cycle began when I was eighteen. I had decided to leave the Reserve, telling myself that I needed to experience life beyond these forests. As memories of that day flood my mind, they are accompanied by the familiar and pleasant smell of old pine boards, left unfinished. Those boards line the walls and ceiling of my small home where I was raised by Grandfather, right here on the Reserve.
Then I envision myself standing in my bedroom. My arms are extended in front of me as I hold out a deerskin coat. Every inch of the coat is familiar to me, for it was my hands that scraped, and rubbed it until the leather became as soft as my own skin. Carefully, I ready it for my packsack, promising myself to protect it with my life, unaware that within three years I would hock it without attachment.
I continue to sort through my belongings, laying them on the flannel blanket that has always draped my narrow bed. Only a few feet away Grandfather is sitting on his wooden chair, watching me quietly through the doorway of the kitchen. He raised me from the age of three, after Dad’s death in a mining accident. There is no blood relation between us, yet to me, he is my grandfather. I’ve always addressed him so for First Nation’s people consider all elders as grandfathers to the young. He in turn enjoys calling me, My Son for he has no children of his own.
As he sits, I sense his desire to pass on some last-minute wisdom, before I leave. From the corner of my eye, I see him stroke the side of his neck as he often does when he is about to speak.
“Do you remember when you arrived here, My Son?”
His slow manner of speaking, and his low tone of voice have always held my attention.
“Sort of!” I answered.
“Before that day, My Son, I met with the Band Council. They needed to hear my thoughts. I asked them to prepare a place for a white child. I told them: ‘Someday this white boy will become like an eagle. He will ride the spirit of the wind like no other. In each country, people will see him grace their skies. And as they watch him, they will understand the beauty of our Native ways.”
“Me?” I asked. He ignored my dismay.
“Some of the people in the community believe that you should remain here among the people who you love, and who accept you as their own. They believe that you should let Nature prepare you for your destiny.
“Others say that leaving for the city is going against the spirits that brought you here to us, many years ago.”
Standing at my bed continuing to pack, I shake my head vigorously, intent on defying their wishes. “I must leave!”
Grandfather says, “I do not agree with them! ‘No!’ I tell them.
‘My Son, seeks an even higher destiny than the one we saw for him.
A destiny that only . . . you can follow, My Son.”
His words held special meaning for me. A destiny only I can follow, I silently repeat them, realizing that Grandfather isn’t trying to divert my plans; he is preparing me for my journey. A sense of confidence rises inside me. Grandfather sees me as an eagle. If I can, I will help the Native cause just to please him. Turning toward his awaiting eyes I find him smiling. As always, his love dissolves my fear. Now I am strong enough to leave.
A CHANGE IN THE brightness at the entrance of the tunnel brings me back to the present. A ray of sunlight momentarily breaks through, as the clouds slide overhead dissolving the grey day. I watch the contrasting brightness as it lights up the trees, penetrating the dense canopy to eventually settle directly on me. But a lower cloud formation pushes the sunlight aside, leaving me with a damp chill. Thoughts of Grandfather become a warming contrast as I return to our fateful conversation.
“My Son,” he said to me from the kitchen. “Do you recall when you were a wee boy and your father brought you here to tell me your dreams?”
“Do you mean the ones when I merged with Nature?”
“Yes! Do you think about those dreams?”
“No! But I remember them.”