![]() He has won numerous Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America and was presented with the Cherokee Medal of Honor in 2000. The Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers named him Wordcrafter of the Year for 1997. Mankiller, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, has contributed a foreword. Conley is the author of over seventy books. Powerful, often dealing with cruel events, yet imbued with a mystical aura, these stories reflect the range of Cherokee culture and the differences among the full and mixed-blood inheritors. Cherokee history forms the basis of others, notably in ``Yellow Bird: An Imaginary Autobiography,'' an extended variation on the Genesis story, and ``The Night George Wolfe Died,'' a bitter telling of Indian-white relationship. In the title story an entire family, one by one, succumbs to the power of the tsigli. In ``The Endless Dark of the Night,'' a contemporary couple attempts to deprecate an old superstition``They say that whenever you see a fox that somebody's gonna die''but their uneasiness is troubling. ![]() ![]() A Cherokee cop (``Badger'') who fears an ``old hoot owl hanging around my house,'' takes a bullet to an Indian witch doctor for a special incantation. Many of the stories revolve around the tsigli, usually a witch whose evil capabilities may be presaged by visits from owls, hawks or foxes. The oral storytelling heritage of the Cherokee nation, with its emphasis on the spirit life as everyday reality, is the source for this collection by Conley, a Cherokee Indian and a leader in the indigenous literature movement. ![]()
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