Product Description

When sixteen-year-old Omishto, a member of the Taiga Tribe, witnesses her Aunt Ama kill a panther--an animal considered to be a sacred ancestor of the Taiga people--she is suddenly torn between her loyalties to her Westernized mother, who wants her to reject the ways of the tribe, and to Ama and her traditional people, for whom the killing of the panther takes on grave importance.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #323953 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 235 pages

Amazon.com Review
In this coming-of-age story, a 16-year-old Native American girl named Omishito (a Tiaga name meaning One Who Watches) inadvertently witnesses the hunting and killing of her clan's sacred animal, the Florida panther. What makes this especially troubling and complicated for Omishito is that her beloved spiritual mentor, Ama, is the panther's murderer. At first, Omishito cannot fathom why Ama, a tribal elder who still practices the old powers, would commit this sacrilege and risk the wrath of her tribe and country. (Unlike the Tiaga tribe, the Florida panther is considered endangered and therefore federally protected.) Through seamless storytelling and expert scene building, Linda Hogan reveals the many-layered mysteries inherent in this novel (based on a true story) as well as the powerful forces that endanger Native Americans and the survival of their spirituality. --Gail Hudson

From Publishers Weekly
Sixteen-year-old Omishita Eaton and her adoptive Aunt Ama, the main characters of Chickasaw Indian Hogan's (Solar Storms) thought-provoking new bildungsroman, are members of the fictional Taiga tribe of Florida, a dwindling group down to its last 30 members. After a devastating hurricane, Ama and the girl track a wounded deer into the swamps, using it as a stalking horse to hunt a panther, an animal sacred to the Taiga. Ama kills the cat, a scrawny, flea-bitten example of its species, and is charged with poaching and violations of the Endangered Species Act. The event tears the Taiga community apart. Most castigate her for slaying the sacred animal, but Omishita stands by her. Though Ama's motives are never made entirely clear, there are intimations that she undertook the taboo act in the hope of sparking a regeneration not only of the Taiga culture but of all Creation itself. Hogan is known principally as a poet, and the current work reflects that vocation in her lyrical, almost mystical use of language. The novel is about two different ways of knowing the world and the problems that ensue when these ways come into conflict. Though slow at times, this is nonetheless a novel of gentle rewards.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The Washington Post
An enchanting coming-of-age tale.

Customer Reviews

Dry up, It's not all that great.
I was obligated to read this book for a college course. While it does have some redeeming literary value (and quite frankly the panther hunt was cool), it fails as a narrative. It moves from being a well driven story in the beginning, to an amorphous and boring fictional dissertation about the friction between tribal an western ways of viewing the world.

You will be hard pressed to find a book that is more stylistically pretentious, or one that says so much while conveying so little, or one that will take as much of your will 'power' to finish.

If you have a choice in the matter, there are other pieces of native american fiction that are more entertaining and contain more original thought.

My Favorite Book of the Year
Hogan's voice is unique, poetic, fluid, and very rooted in nature. In both POWER and SOLAR STORMS, she explores the complexity of relationships with our own culture, the natural world, and the spirit world, creating rich and multi-dimensional stories. Both of these books have been beautiful experiences for me that leave me wanting to share them with everyone. All my friends will be receiving POWER for their birthday this year.
Kaya McLaren, author of CHURCH OF THE DOG, ON THE DIVINITY OF SECOND CHANCES, and HOW I CAME TO SPARKLE AGAIN

True "Power"
Ms. Hogan has woven a tale that is a tapestry both complex and deceptively simple in focus. For many, this story could be told with other than Native symbology, from the point of view of living honestly and the struggles within the lives we inhabit, be it home, work, family, neighborhood, or, most importantly, self. She illustrates with reverance how deeply connected we are to all of creation and how, when we seek meaning in our lives in indifference to all of creation, how separate and fearful our beliefs can become. This is carefully illustrated by Ms. Hogan through the duplicitous nature of many of the characters (not unlike any of us) interacting with the young woman of this story. The fear Ms. Hogan exposes throughout the telling of this story is that which is held in many hearts when confronted with how we have moved from living with respect for life to the group-held belief and reality that being human is separate and above the rest of creation. This book tells of old ways which compel a young woman to herself, which is, in my view, both particular to this story and potentially to any reader that "sees" similar to that of the young Native woman whose story this book reveals. Ms. Hogan speaks of that which is authentic, sacred, and true. The book has much to say, but it also draws the landscape of the Florida swamps with its heat and searing presence indelibly in the readers mind. The book confirms the truth of life as an immutable force larger than any of our efforts to ignore it. I am grateful to have read her work.