Going Through Ghosts
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- US$24.99
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Maggie Foltz is a fifty-five-year-old cocktail waitress in a rundown casino in the southern Nevada Mojave Desert. She spends her days serving drinks to lonely old folks playing the slot machines and her nights trying to escape her bitter past. When she befriends Sarah, a young Native American woman who is hired to cook in the casino coffee shop, her life begins to change. Maggie finds herself falling in love with a memory-haunted Vietnam veteran and warily begins to hope that together they can find peace. Then Sarah is mysteriously murdered, and Sarah’s ghost enlists Maggie to accompany her on a quest for the wisdom that she needs in order to move into the next world. The story ranges from smoky casinos into the harsh magnificence of the desert and the reservation where Sarah’s people are trying to preserve their culture and find their own place in a modern world that seems to want them to be either shamans or losers. Sojourner’s characters are compellingly real, and the Mojave setting has rarely been depicted as sensitively or truthfully. This is a memorable story of love, redemption, and solace, told by one of the West’s finest writers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sojourner s suspenseful and finely observed second novel (after several story collections and works of nonfiction) reaches deeply into Native American lore as it pursues an unlikely friendship between two hard-luck women one living, one dead. Maggie Foltz (aka Maggie May for tips ) is a cocktail waitress with a heart of gold at the Crystal Casino in Creosote, Nev. At 54, Maggie is weary of falling for charismatic men and helps Sarah, a young transient, get a job at the casino. Sarah, who grew up in the small Willow tribe of Bone Lake, has fled man trouble of her own, and the two women become pals all too briefly before Sarah is murdered. However, their friendship only intensifies from here on, as Sarah returns with the help of the Willow healer Minnie Siyala and guides Maggie back to Bone Lake to resolve spiritual issues. In punchy, alternating points of view, Sojourner introduces potential murderers and plenty of quirky customers as Maggie helps Sarah s spirit transition to what comes next. Sojourner s sympathy for her characters is palpable and gracious, making this a notable and worthy effort.
