L'opera di N. Scott Momaday è da sempre incentrata sull'intenzione di conservare e trasmettere la cultura nativa. L'autore, cresciuto nelle riserve navajo, apache e pueblo del Sudovest americano, negli anni ha sviluppato un rapporto intimo e profondo con il territorio. «Se penso alla mia vita e a quella dei miei antenati,» scrive nel libro «non posso non convincermi che sia io che loro apparteniamo al territorio americano. E questa è una dichiarazione di appartenenza. È un'offerta alla terra». Attraverso questi frammenti, che intrecciano leggende tramandate da generazioni a ricordi personali, Momaday ci descrive la connessione spirituale tra uomo e paesaggio, un legame impossibile da recidere. La Terra, ci dice, è un luogo sacro. E noi tutti siamo i suoi custodi.

Abel, un giovane nativo americano, torna dalla guerra e si ritrova combattuto fra due mondi. Il primo è quello dei nonni, che lo lega al ritmo delle stagioni, alla bellezza selvaggia della natura, agli antichi riti e alle tradizioni del suo popolo. Ma l'altro, l'America moderna e industriale, lo chiama a sé ed esige da lui lealtà, spingendolo in un ciclo distruttivo di vizio e corruzione. Da troppo tempo assente dagli scaffali delle librerie italiane, Casa fatta di alba, prima opera di un nativo americano a vincere il premio Pulitzer nel 1969, da cinquant'anni commuove e ispira lettori e scrittori di tutto il mondo. Un tragico racconto sui danni prodotti dalla guerra e dall'alienazione culturale, e sulla speranza con cui si torna alla propria terra, riscoprendo il valore sacro della famiglia e delle tradizioni.

This book represents the culmination of David Grant Noble's forty-year career as a fine arts photographer and writer. It features seventy-six black-and-white photographs of the land, people, and deep past of the Southwest, most published here for the first time. Accompanying these beautiful images are personal reflections interwoven with historical and anthropological information. The moving passages reveal much about the man and the magnificent land that inspires his artistry.

'The places we know,' Noble writes, 'can be infused with memory and spirit, and landscapes can have soul. The stories contained may speak of creation, gods, mythic monsters, and heroes. They may hold narratives reminding us of triumphs and defeats, sorrows and joys. A place is more than a landform or an ecosystem; it has the capacity to evoke emotion, transmit knowledge and wisdom, and even show people how to live.'

These photographs and words portray the land's soul, the artist's vision. Through them, the ancient landscapes and peoples of the Southwest tell their tales, display their beauty, remind us that we are only the most recent of many who have lived and been inspired here.

'This book is about humanity, timelessness, and place in the American Southwest. Amidst an alternating beat of facts, personal narrative, and photographs of landscapes imprinted with ancient images and ancestral homes, the reader/viewer is engaged in a singular odyssey through centuries and sacred space where the boundaries of time are erased. As David Noble explores the unpredictable and uncertain bridges between past and present, he weaves all of us into a continuous---if not seamless---fabric of being in a moment in time.'---Polly Schaafsma, author of Indian Rock Art of the Southwest

'Explorer, writer, and photographer extraordinaire David Grant Noble leads us on an archaeological odyssey through the Southwestern landscape. The spirituality of the places and the Native American inhabitants, both contemporary and ancient, are splendidly captured by Noble's elegant prose and vivid photographs. In the Places of the Spirits is a very personal chronicle by one of the Southwest's most sensitive and insightful observers.'---Mark Michel, President, The Archaeological Conservancy

'This book sums up one scholar/artist's lifetime of good work and takes us deep into the soul of the Southwest.'---Stephen Trimble, author of The People: Indians of the American Southwest

'In the Places of the Spirits renews our appreciation of the ancient heritage of the American Southwest and of the modern art of photography.'---George A. Miles, Curator, Western Americana Collection, Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

'It took time to find the hand- and toe-hold trail down the cliff; then, with the aid of a rope, we carefully descended to the canyon floor and entered the maze of twisting, meandering branches. Surrounded by steep rock walls, we could not see our landmarks and we lost our sense of direction. Rain showers came and went. At midday, with hopes of finding the pictographs dimmed, we stopped to rest and eat. Afterward, we set off again, turned a corner, and there they were---tall, elongated, ghostlike anthropomorphic figures, some with striped bodies and horns, others with bulbous heads and thin, fragile legs. One had its arm outstretched, rabbits running along the forearm and a plant sprouting from the delicate fingertips. Further along the cliff, a goggle-wearing humanoid stared at me forbiddingly as I photographed. Each gave the illusion of hovering in a space of its own, somewhere between solid rock and air. From an intangible dimension between worlds they watched us in silence. They had an aura of death and life without end.'---David Grant Noble, In the Places of the Spirits, Part I

You are the dark shape I find On nights of the spilling moon, Pale in the pool of heaven. You are spirit, you are that Which summons me and confirms My passage. You know my name---from 'Revenant'

Since receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his novel House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momaday has had one of the most remarkable careers in twentieth-century American letters. Here he passionately explores themes of loneliness, sacredness, and aggression through his depiction of Bear, the animal that has both inspired and haunted him all his life. With transcendent dignity and gentleness, In the Bear's House celebrates Momaday's extraordinary creative vision and evolution as one of our most gifted artists.

'Let me say at the outset that this book is not about Bear (he would be spoken of in the singular and masculine, capitalized and without an article), or it is only incidentally about him. I am less interested in defining the being of Bear than in trying to understand something about the spirit of wilderness, of which Bear is a very particular expression... Bear is a template of the wilderness.'---from the Introduction

'The bold brushstrokes of Momaday's paintings echo the power and precision of his poerty and prose.'---Kirkus Reviews

The magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of a stranger in his native land

A young Native American, Abel has come home from a foreign war to find himself caught between two worlds. The first is the world of his father's, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the land, and the ancient rites and traditions of his people. But the other world -- modern, industrial America -- pulls at Abel, demanding his loyalty, claiming his soul, goading him into a destructive, compulsive cycle of dissipation and disgust. And the young man, torn in two, descends into hell.

In House Made of Dawn and The Way to Rainy Mountain Momaday interwove oral and literary traditions to connect not only members of his own Kiowa nation but all those who understood that sometimes you are the Sun, and sometimes you marry it. In two plays and one screenplay, Momaday explains why runaways from the Kiowa Boarding School froze to death while trying to return to their families in 1891, how First Nations relate to the sun, and why children were expected to assimilate in off-reservation boarding schools. These pieces are not gentle. They place blame where it is due, and they also explore the ways in which people can delude themselves on both sides of an issue. But they are also lyrical, mythical, and accessible. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Visually beautiful and historically important, the Spanish missions of the United States are a unique legacy of two very different cultures. Conceived as an expression of the Catholic faith of the European conquerors, they were built and maintained by native Americans, who incorporated their own traditions. A Sense of Mission presents 29 of these fascinating and popular churches in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Southern California. More than 150 color photographs feature dramatic exteriors and grounds, altarpieces, statues, carvings, frescoes, and other folk details. The text explores the history of the missions, how they were built, and the meaning behind their symbols, while an introduction by N. Scott Momaday lends insight from the Native American perspective. Visitor information, maps, and an annotated reading list round out this handsome, authoritative guide of more than a decade.

A mute Indian child has an extraordinary experience one Christmas when he seems to see his late grandfather and all of the world join in a moment of peace and good will

House Made of Dawn, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969, tells the story of a young American Indian named Abel, home from a foreign war and caught between two worlds: one his father's, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons and the harsh beauty of the land; the other of industrial America, a goading him into a compulsive cycle of dissipation and disgust.

In his first novel since the Pulitzer Prize-winning House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momaday shapes the ancient Kiowa myth of a boy who turned into a bear into a timeless American classic. The Ancient Child juxtaposes Indian lore and Wild West legend into a hypnotic, often lyrical contemporary novel--the story of Locke Setman, known as Set, a Native American raised far from the reservation by his adoptive father. Set feels a strange aching in his soul and, returning to tribal lands for the funeral of his grandmother, is drawn irresistibly to the fabled bear-boy. When he meets Grey, a beautiful young medicine woman with a visionary gift, his world is turned upside down. Here is a magical saga of one man's tormented search for his identity--a quintessential American novel, and a great one.