The Wading Place

Orphaned at fifteen, Katie Carson leaves her familiar surroundings in a small Midwestern town to seek her future in California. An accident sidetracks her dreams in the mountains of Oregon, where she finds love with a young Minkodan doctor. In 1949 America, however, their love was forbidden by both her people and his, and she must leave him when he is forced to marry a woman from his tribe. Spanning the years 1949 to 1962, this is the story of one woman, two identities, and two men who love her. She will give herself to one man for love and to the other for money in a desperate attempt to save the life of her child with the man she could not have. Can a small-town girl from Lester, Iowa, overcome the bigotry and heartache she encounters on the West Coast to return with her son to the Wading Place and complete the Minkodan cycle of love?

A dynamic translation of the timeless African epic. The feats of the hero Mwindo are glorified in this epic work, sung and narrated in a Bantu language and acted out by a member of the Nyanga tribe in the remote forest regions of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Beautifully structured and richly poetic, the epic is in prose form, interspersed with song and proverbs in verse. As an example of the classic tradition of oral folk literature, the tale provides profound insights into the social structure, values, and cosmology of this African people.