“In the time of long ago,” in a land where mountains rise from the surrounding desert like the jaws of a wolf, evil has once again emerged from beneath the arroyos and infected the only village in that vast landscape. A young girl and her family hold the key to defeating this evil, but to find help they must journey into a land from which few have returned and search for a place out of ancient legend.
Southern New Mexico author Nicholas Varner began writing this book in the late 1970s while living in the setting of the Navajo reservation in Chinle, Arizona. He finished it, sent it out for consideration, and when it was rejected, it went in a file – for decades.
“I thought I had finished it,” he said. “I completely rewrote it four decades later. After all the changes from rewrites, it bears very little resemblance to what I wrote back then.”
Varner has taken his experiences from memories of his mentor, Apache Bill Russell back in the 1950s to his travels as a book deliverer on the Tohono O’odham reservation in the 80s and 90s, mixed them with a landscape familiar to all in the southwest deserts, and created a story without violence (on humans), drugs or sex.
For all that, it is a compelling tale about a girl and her family on a quest to fight evil.
“Seasons of the Blue Pearl” is a Nautilus Book Award winner in young adult fiction, but Varner said, it is also for adults.
“It expounds really important values like friendship, sacrifice for others and perseverance,” he said. I was told it would never sell because it has no sex, no human-on-human violence and no drugs. It has three strong female characters, the main character, Mia; a woman named Salt Woman and Mia’s mother, Tumas; maybe another, known as Old Woman.”
The book is also the winner of the Speak Up Talk Radio Firebird Book Awards.
By the time he finished writing the book he had been reading a lot of mythology, not only native American but Celtic and Norse and seeing many similarities in the systems.
Varner said his lyrical abilities come from the sacred wind.
“Sometimes I dream some of this,” he said. “I write from the top of my head; at the end of the day I don’t know where its going to go. Sometimes I see a place in the distance, but I don’t know how I’m going to get there.”
“Seasons of the Blue Pearl” can be found on Amazon, at Barnes and Noble as well as at SWAG Bookstore in Silver City and directly from the Friesenpress website. It is also available as an eBook.
From 6-7 p.m., Wednesday, Aug. 23, he will be doing a book signing and talk with fellow southwest New Mexico author, Sharman Apt Russell at Western New Mexico University’s C. Cloyd Miller Library in Silver City. Visit nicholasvarnerbooks.com for more information.
