Category Archives: Published Books
The Miracle of Navajo Technical University
This is my newest book. I put the together with a number of colleagues from Navajo Tech where I was the Provost up until my retirement. Navajo Tech and the 38 tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) are in serious trouble from the budget cuts in Washington DC. Several colleges, like the iconic and irreplaceable Institute of American Indian Arts, is in danger of closing. IAIA has had its budget totally eliminated in the House of Representative budget now going to Congress. The TCUs are one of the greatest innovations in higher education during the late 20th and early 21st century. Losing them is unthinkable.
What I wanted to achieve with this book is to use Navajo Tech as a lens to illustrate just how valuable the tribal colleges are on several levels: To the students they serve, the Native Nations that chartered them, and the United States as whole. The science and technology at Navajo Tech is world class, and its defense of culture and language has led to the creation of the first PhD program by a TCU. It is a miracle that needs to be strengthened as it tackles the grand challenge of generational poverty and provides both an educational and economic development model about how poverty in any community can be reversed.
I am hoping those who buy this book, encourage their library to purchase it so they can read it, or simply get the chance to read it will write their Congresspeople, Senators or Representatives, and express just how much the TCUs deserve support. This book will help you, I hope, not only learn about Navajo Tech but also the Navajo people and the strength of who they are as a people.
Filed under Published Books, Thomas Davis
Reflections of a Country Girl for Her Mother
by Ethel Mortenson Daivs, published in Letter on the Horizon’s Poem
Once, when the creek
had swelled its banks in spring,
and I had run to meet its new boundaries
to build a raft
that could carry me down the Little Sandy
towards lands unknown,
I was sidetracked by a patch
of blue and yellow violets—
too many to let go unnoticed,
found among the wet and shady places—
and I forgot about the countries unseen.
And in fist-fulls I came running,
sharing them with you—
and you received them well,
arranging them in glass jars,
teaching me to love
the spring beauties and things,
the funny-faced Holstein calves,
and the timid chickadees
who came in December
to snatch your winter’s crumbs.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Published Books
Wonderful Review of The Woman and The Whale
Estella Lauter is out with a new review of Ethel Mortenson Davis’s latest book, The Woman and the Whale. Dr. Lauter was the Chair of the English Department at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh and is considered a major scholar, having published two critical analysis books by major university presses. She is also the author of several books of poetry and is a former Door County Poet Laureate, receiving that among several other honors.
The Woman and the Whale
By Ethel Mortenson Davis from her new book, The Woman and the Whale
The day was a day of celebration.
A small Right Whale stood vertical,
head out of the water,
straight up in the air,
his dorsal fins reaching like arms
toward the sky.
A woman diver
from a South Pacific Island
said the whale tried to tuck her
under his dorsal fin
when she interacted with him.
At first, she struggled to get away—
until she saw the shark
circling her, trying to get at her.
The whale kept his body between
the diver and the shark.
Then the whale grew agitated,
slapped his tail at the shark,
before finally running it off.
Today, the whale came back with his family,
many heads sticking straight up in the air.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Published Books
Juniper’s Dragon in the Year of the Dragon is now available
Dragons in the deep earth beneath the wild landscape of New Mexico’s El Malpais wilderness, a thought-provoking adventure, stories of young love and madness and the undying love between a man and his troubled wife, the strange and beautiful witch of the El Malpais, and the violence inherent in our troubled 21st century are all present in a tale as powerful as one of Ursula LeGuin’s fantasy novels. A companion novel to the epic poem, The Weirding Storm, a Dragon Epic published by Bennison Books.
Filed under Published Books, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
Juniper’s Dragon is almost here — Year of the Dragon
My newest novel, Juniper’s Dragon, arrived as a physical proof this afternoon! I’m excited.
Dragons in the 21st century? In the caverns below the El Malpais wilderness in New Mexico? Juniper, fleeing the beautiful and terrifying witch of the El Malpais scrambles into a blowhole in the wilderness where he lives with his father. There he discovers dragons, and his life begins to change.
Part wild adventure, part love story, part coming of age story in the land where Navajo and Anglos live, dragons suddenly discover they are creature of the earth and sky and not just of deep caverns and an underground river.
Humming pitched into a tornado of sound. Juniper put hands over his ears and pressed as hard as he could, but sound vibrated his bones. He started sweating even though the cavern was cold. Simalucroix twisted and stood on his hind legs, stretching his long neck, breathing flame into the darkness.
Small puffs of flame emitted from dragon nostrils all over the cavern, glittering the ceiling alight with orange, yellow, white, and green colors from minerals never touched by light.
Simalucroix twisted again. Skin from his back parted. Wings unfolded and gushed wind toward Juniper.
“We are dragons again!” Simalucroix roared triumphantly. “Great dragons!”
The humming became a sound of joy not heard for millennia. A thousand dragon voices rumbled, chortled, and buffeted Juniper. He felt sick deep inside his heart and fell to the ground. He felt small, insignificant, a firefly’s flicker in the universe’s immensity.
“Enough!” Simalucroix roared.
Silence was immediate.
Simalucroix, looking like a dragon from the times when St. George had hunted them in silver armor and a black and red head metal visor, walked slowly to the fallen man-child. He bent his long neck toward the ground and wrinkled his great nostrils.
“We forget ourselves. We have a guest. He has had to find courage to be here to see ancient ways become new again. Juniper?” he asked.
Juniper looked up into the glittering eye of a great, winged dragon.
Filed under Published Books, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
The Prophecy of the Wolf Published!
My new novel, The Prophecy of the Wolf, has been released by All Things That Matter Press! It’s available now at Otherworlds Books and More and Novel Bay in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin and Yardstick Books in Algoma, Wisconsin. Readers can also order it from almost any online venue.
I spent three years working on a historical novel that is set in the mid to late 1600s on the Door Peninsula and Washington Island as famous French priests and fur traders started to seriously impact the traditional lives of Native Americans. The Neshnabek, or Potawatomi Tribe, are at the heart of the story as Ogima tells about how he, as a young man, became embroiled in the affairs of Quapaw, a powerful waubeno that has had a vision given to him by a storyteller wolf. Quapaw, because of his shaman visions, starts to try to keep the Neshnabek from falling prey to the fur trade, the beguilement of French trade, and power of Christian conversion. The novel explores the largest themes possible as event follows event, eventually reaching a crescendo that has become a distant legend even in our time. In the process the lifestyle and beauty of Neshnabek civilization and culture becomes a beautiful backdrop to the action.
Filed under Published Books, Thomas Davis
Joey with his copy of Apples for the Wild Stallion
I wrote Apples for the Wild Stallion after Joey’s mother, Sonja Bingen, while starting to read the first book in the Harry Potter series while we were visiting one day, looked at me and said, wistfully, I’ve been trying to find books that has a character Joey can relate to, but I’ve only been able to find one. After getting home to Sturgeon Bay, I sat down and started writing this novel. After all, Joey loves horses, and here he is with the novel.
Sonja tells me that she is going to start reading it with him after she finished teaching in early June. She ordered the book from amazon, though, not willing to wait for the copies I’ve got coming in from All Things That Matter Press, and here is the photo she sent of Joey with his copy of the book written for him.
Filed under Published Books, Thomas Davis
Apples for the Wild Stallion is Published!
I just received some unexpected news! All Things That Matter Press has just published my newest novel, Apples for the Wild Stallion. Written for my grandson, Joey Bingen, after his mother Sonja looked up at me one day while starting to read the first Harry Potter book to him and told me that she had been looking for books that he could relate to but couldn’t find any, the novel features a hero that cannot talk because of his autism, but is a hero anyway. He, along with his family living on Wrangler Road just outside Continental Divide, NM where Ethel used to take her daily walks into wilderness, face up to a gang of thugs that threaten them and their neighbors and a magical wild stallion that keeps coming for apples that Austin, the hero, keeps placing between a grandmother juniper tree in the Zuni Mountains where their ranch is located.
Sonja Bingen, our daughter, contributed the photograph that is on the cover and wrote a small piece about Joey in the book. His grandfather is hoping that when Joey listens to the novel it not only gives a character that he can relate to but also gives him an experience he never forgets. I expected the book to come out in June, but now it can be ordered from bookstores, from amazon.com, and other places where young adult books are sold!
Filed under Published Books, Thomas Davis
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