FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sara Sgarlat, Publicity Director
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The Coyote Bead
by: Gerald Hausman
“Gerald Hausman brings a poet’s keen vision to this narrative of a Native American tragedy, one that reverberates with so much that was to come in our own time.”
—Aram Saroyan, author of Day and Night: Bolinas Poems
“...The tragic yet poignant story of a band of resolute Navajo people as told in The Coyote Bead is as timeless and provocative as the account of the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath.”
—Michael Wallis, author of The Real Wild West
“This is Gerald Hausman’s finest book.”
—David Kherdian, Newbery Honor award winning author of The Road from Home
When the Navajo were forced to march 300 miles on foot by the U.S. government to Fort Sumner, many died. This journey, now known as The Long Walk, has commonly been considered the result of years of enmity between the white man and the native people. However, tales exist that speak of other reasons for the great nation of the Navajo’s fall from prosperity. A small group of Navajo did not leave the canyons of their homelands to endure the brutal journey, but stayed on, living in caves and other hiding places. The tale of survival as told in The Coyote Bead is a personal history of this tragic time of the Navajo, their near destruction, and the magic used to restore them.
Between the agony of the Long Walk and the courage of those who stayed we find the story of Tobachischin, the young Navajo who narrates The Coyote Bead. Despite his youth, the boy is very resourceful and respectful of the old ways taught to him by his shaman grandfather. It is these old ways, including the powerful coyote beadway ceremony performed to balance the opposing energies of peace and violence, harmony and war, that Tobachischin must learn to defeat the trickster Coyote and give himself safe passage to his people.
Award-winning children’s author and folklorist Gerald Hausman continues to break new ground as he records a small part of the oral history of a great nation. The Coyote Bead, based on a tale related to Hausman by his friend Bluejay DeGroat, tells of the spiritual pilgrimage made by the Navajo to the strong, peaceful people of the present time.
October 1999, 5 ˝ x 8 ˝, Trade paper, $11.95, 144 pages, ISBN 1-57174-145-3