Böcker av Gladys Swan

A Dark Gamble, a Western epic inspired by the great epic of Gilgamesh, is set in New Mexico during the era when gold and silver were being discovered and prospectors, miners and ranchers were pouring into the territory, the local Apaches consequently being hunted down and displaced. The novel is an attempt to explore an aspect of the American past, with its roots in an untamed land and the uneasy transition to the modern world. The action takes place in the town of Destiny, which shoots up when gold is discovered in the region. The story is told by a narrator who has heard tales of Gil Weston and Jack Cameron since his youth, men who still engage his imagination of those around him. Out of his own fascination and curiosity, he feels compelled to take up their story himself as part of his own quest for an understanding of the past and a meaning for his own life.

As Chloride, a dying New Mexican mining town, whirls toward a rendezvous with truth, its people find themselves precariously balanced between a lost past of blood-deep spirituality and an unknowable, terrifying future, between the world of drama and the drama of the world. A filmmaker trying to turn his disillusionment into truth; a once celebrated film star who disappears; a look-alike who takes her place; a trickster who enjoys the chaos he creates around him are all part of the play. In this eerie, beautifully crafted novel, Gladys Swan presents an impressionistic palimpsest of myth and modem life. The present is revealed as only a play of light and shadow over a ghost dance that-tenu¬ously-ensures the world's continued exis¬tence. Part history, part myth, part meditation on truth and illusion, the novel reveals a kaleidoscope of plots and subplots, each refracted through the perceptions-the voices-of a cast of characters as intriguing as the Southwest itself. Ghost Dance: A Play of Voices is the second novel in a trilogy that includes A Dark Gamble and Ancestors. A Dark Gamble is available from Serving House Books, and Ancestors is forthcoming. Nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award

In Ancestors, Hawkins, a man adrift, finds himself in a Native American homeland called Chaco Canyon, a place of relics haunted by history. He is besieged by voices revealing memories of other lives, including those of his immediate family, truths he had never known: "Like something out of a dream. He could see it, those stone dwellings high on the cliff, speaking of those who had been there who knows when. And who were they? Ancestors, the voice said . . ." Hawkins learns the painful histories of the generations of his origins, who he is, and the quest he must fulfill in spite of the obstacles in his path and temptation to give in and run from the challenges facing him. Ancestors completes Gladys Swan's Southwestern trilogy, following Ghost Dance and A Dark Gamble, novels also available from Serving House Books.