The Basket Maker
By Kate Niles
GreyCore Press ISBN: 0-9742074-0-3

A Literary Review, by Marylin Houle

    Sarah Graves is a ten year old girl with a fascination for Native culture, and a wisdom reaching far beyond what her parent's PhDs could ever come close to.

Across the street from Sarah, resides Madeline Oodegard, a woman who's lived quite a life as a nurse, teacher, mother, and wife.
Barbara MacIntosh, a former student of Madeline's, lives with her two boys and husband.  Her passion is weaving blankets and baskets.
Chief Ouray of the Ute tribe lies in his resting place where Sarah lives.  A renowned Indian Chief who had once had a wife and son.
The mountains beneath him are ancient and have seen many generations live and die.  They have watched all the pain and suffering that people have brought upon themselves, the land, and each other.

      If the mountains could speak - of Chief Oouray's hidden rage, which buries the pain he's carried over in death of having his only son taken away from him and of seeing his people destroyed; of the pain that Barbara MacIntosh hides inside as she watches her little boy suffer the agony of burn wounds; of the emptiness that Madeline Oodegard consumes herself in, perhaps as a penance for out living her suicidal husband; and of poor Sarah Graves, who is the smallest and most fragile of all these, but suffers the most... in the dark of the night and in the very cradle of where trust should be woven - if the mountains could speak of these, they would erupt in terrible anger, and scar the land, letting them know, perhaps, a little of the pain going on upon their very peaks.

      The Basket Maker is a tremendous stirring of emotions told by each character's point of view, resulting in an overload of empathy for diverse situations.
This story says that we all have our own fire inside of us, our own secret pain - we can either let it burn at us from within, or we can release it, erupting like a volcano, shaping our foundation.

     Reading this story made me feel like one of those people who slow down to take a peak when driving by an accident, or who cover their eyes for the scary parts of the movie, but can't help but peak in between fingers just a little.
I think the lesson, though, that this book so well expresses, is that sometimes you have to look. Sometimes you have to slow down and try to see what is going on outside ourselves, no matter how hard it may be.

The Basket Maker will be released on May 15, 2004. 

You can purchase a copy at Amazon.ca

©2004 Words Words Words.  All Rights Reserved.