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“Dead Water Rites strikes like a lightning bolt at the heart of an issue critical to our survival. Monty Joynes’ work is Spirit-driven!”—Eagle Woman/Red Leaf, Cherokee/Choctaw Elder

“With rare depth and thoroughness, Monty Joynes understands the perils and rewards of nurturing a vision—and an intelligent openness to the possibility of vision—over a period of many years. Booker lives!”—Henry Taylor, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning, The Flying Colors

“Dead Water Rites is a powerful story and a pure pleasure to read.”—George Garrett, author of The Death of the Fox

     Water—that which comes from the earth and sky, the priceless compound of elements that forms and supports life—is dying. Warned of this in a vision, the elder of the Pueblo sends his chosen one to learn the fate of their precious life source. Booker Jones, a white man once known as Winn Connover but who now shares the work and vision of the tribe as “Anglo,” seeks a solution to the crisis that threatens should the tribal council sell its water rights to developers. As Booker finds friends—and new love—among the Hispanos and others who share and care for the land, he struggles to maintain the inner peace he has achieved in the face of an ever-increasing threat to the region and its people.

     Dead Water Rites is the fourth in Monty Joynes' Booker series, where his character, Anglo, searches for new identity and spiritual completeness among the Pueblo people. As Joynes seeks to explore man’s place in nature he draws a chilling picture of what will be lost if nature is not preserved and protected. Lloyd Kiva New, founder of the Institute of American Indian Arts, says of Dead Water Rites, “The threat of a severe water shortage is powerfully drawn, not in mere terms of a concerned environmentalist, but in terms of the spiritual loss to groups to whom water is not just a liquid but an embodiment of life and spirit, one of the most precious gifts from the Creator. All four books display an uncanny understanding of Indian ways in general and show special concerns for the sacredness of Pueblo tribes in particular.”

Visionary Fiction, 5¼ x 8¼, Trade paper, 240 pages, ISBN 1-57174-190-9, $13.95, July 2000