An engaging, time-traveling fantasy

• Book: Sacred Mounds – A Historical Fantasy
• Location: Mississippi, Natchez, The Hudson Valley
• Author: Jim Metzner

Review Author: Carol LaHines

Salvador “Lewis” Samuels is a baby boomer from Kingston, New York. Skyfisher is a member of the Natchez tribe in what is present-day Mississippi. Skyfisher is a Shining One, a member of the Society of Light, tribesmen who commune on a telepathic level and share visions, a “vast receptor” of “live wire circuitry.” In this time traveling, historical fantasy, they awaken in each other’s bodies and must navigate their respective realities. Lewis, as Skyfisher, learns the ways of the kuash, the Shining Ones who share one breath. Skyfisher, inhabiting Lewis’ body, learns that his people died out long ago, killed by warring French and driven west in the Trail of Tears, and that the last fluent Natchez speaker died in 1986. Skyfisher teaches his latter-day incarnation to “listen to the world itself,” and tells him to save his people, for it is too late for him. The novel speaks to our shared humanity and the need for empathy; it asks what it is like to inhabit another’s skin; it illustrates vividly the interconnectedness of all things, via the mythology of the Natchez and the kuash who commune with nature and prepare for the day when they will listen and align with the stars.

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