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Desert Rain – A powerful new book
In Wallace Dorian’s intriguing first novella, “Desert Rain,”
he takes his heroine Cynthia Ryan into a heart of darkness. But unlike Joseph
Conrad’s famous classic, Cynthia’s journey takes her into America’s southwest
while making a film of the Kachina cult and the Hopi people, their lore and
their prophecies.
“Desert Rain” tackles the age-old dilemma of death, loss,
redemption and sacrifice in innovative ways. Using the formula of the journey,
Mr. Dorian brings a kind of epic or mythic scope to this contemporary western
steeped in Americana while at the same time, sharing with us a haunting,
somewhat apocalyptic vision of the future that ends on an optimistic note. He does this through the interesting
character of Mary, a half-Hopi coming-of-age eighteen-year old who has not seen
her father in nine years.
The story, while told through the weary eyes of Cynthia, an
Emmy-award winning documentary filmmaker making a comeback after the tragic
suicide death of her teenage son, Steven, is also told in part through Mary’s
eyes as one who not only represents her culture, but a generation that also
seeks it’s own self-identity in a world that has become more technologically
complicated and fraught with anxiety and an uncertain future.
In the midst of all this comes Jack Carlson, a mysterious
rodeo cowboy drifter who is coming to meet his estranged daughter, Mary. It is
through Jack, a kind of guardian angel if you will, who seems to appear from
nowhere and whom Cynthia meets that she comes to grips with the demons that
haunt her as she tries to fulfill her destiny which in the end takes her very
life.
This ending forms the haunting climax of ‘Desert Rain” but
one that uplifts the reader with the idea of re-birth or reincarnation and hope
for the future on a collective level.
The story, a human drama to be sure, tells the plight of
womanhood and the ironic coincidences in our lives that intersect on the road
of life. In that sense, “Desert Rain’ turns out to be a “road story” disguised
as a fable, or an ode to all our lives that is at once temporary but not
trivial.
Interwoven within the novella itself is a very fine thread
that also takes in the ancient lore of the mystical Hopi Indians and the
spirituality of the Kachina cult. While not a story about the Hopi per se, the
metaphor of the plight of the Native Americans cannot be ignored.
“Desert Rain” is a very brisk read that’s short and sweet.
It is currently in ebook format at http://www.wormebooks.com or the author’s website at:
http://www.playsthething.homestead.com/desertrain.html
I strongly recommend this book.
Barbara Kowal is a journalist living in Colorado.
E-mail Barbara Kowal
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