Mary Elizabeth Burgess

Desert Dreams Mary Elizabeth Burgess

Willy falls in love with Native life first through an Elderhostel program, teaching Najavos how to read and write. Reluctantly, she returns home to visit her three children, Dusty, Stephanie, and Mike. Her pastor informs her of the need for teachers with a different tribe. There she meets Jim and Alice, pastor and nurse, supportive and jolly, workhorses like herself. Her grandson Kelly arrives to paint several Indians'portraits which eventually sell well enough for him to open his own gallery. When Navajo men and women leave to help fight forest fires, perhaps it is foreordained that some of them will sacrifice their lives. Though he doesn't die, Billy, son of Miriam Whitehawk who has already lost Blossoming Dove to an epidemic, is helped through painful burn treatments by Tess, a young Teach for America black woman, whom he soon marries. Willy consoles Jim when Alice is killed in a snowstorm driving tiny Little Moon to a hospital for delivery of her baby. Natives cheering them on, especially Navajo Joe, Willy and Jim marry. They answer a call from their synod to go to the Cherokees in North Carolina, then the Shoshones in Wyoming where Red Thunder aims to call tribal Nations together to heal Mother Earth, as he had previously done in Colorado at a convocation. Willy's expertise as a writer and public relations speaker helps Red Thunder and his wife, Shelly of the Light, call a convocation of many Nations at Ringing Rock in Pennsylvania. Reluctantly, Red Thunder agrees to hold the convocation on Independence Day in spite of the fact that "We're not independent" because that date will draw larger crowds. Staying with Willy and Jim, Red Thunder and Shelly are drawn to fireworks at the town's football field that evening. After many months of no rain, on the way home, a shower cools them. "Thank you Great Eagle, Jesus, Buddha, and Mary"Red Thunder exalts. Indeed.