What a pleasure to read this inventive, intelligent new novel by Sandra Shwayder Sanchez. Stillbird has the resonance of an epic tale and the immediacy of a gripping storyline. Sanchez reveals an acute sense of place and season as well as a rich appreciation for history. Through nuanced characterization and dramatic suspense, Sanchez draws us into a complex and fascinating world. Stillbird shows us that Sandra Shwayder Sanchez is a writer to watch for.
–-Valerie Miner, author of Abundant Light and The Low Road
An epic in less than 200 pages, Sandra Shwayder Sanchez’s lovely Stillbird holds every fiber of the reader’s attention from beginning to end, and, like her character, Mary, dances “with more joy than a body could bear.”
–Jennifer Heath, author of The Scimitar and The Veil and On The Edge of Dream
Stillbird is a strangely powerful novel whose haunting, almost surreal images; lyrical, dreamlike prose; and complexity will challenge the most sophisticated reader. Divided into three parts, with each focusing on a specific character or characters, the novel encompasses different locations and timelines. Either directly or indirectly, the characters and their fates are darkly connected to one other. In a bizarre way the events in the story seem to spring from the strangulation of a midwife who was suspected of witchcraft in the Isle of Skye in the 1880s, and culminates tragically in Denver in the 1960s.... Sanchez' writing style is exquisite. Her flawless prose flows—sometimes beautiful, sometimes disturbing—but always memorable. Stillbird is a novel I highly recommend for the serious reader
Myra Calvani, Bloomsbury Review
Stillbird
by
Sandra Shwayder Sanchez
******
PUBLISHED BY:
Stillbird
copyright 2005 by Sandra Shwayder Sanchez
Acknowlegements:
Cover drawing by Jeanne Hershorn
Dedicated to the Angelas who every day overcome hardship in order to know joy
#
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part I Stillbird I
I
II
III
IV
V
Part II John Banks
VI
VII
Part III Mary Queen of Scots
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
a note about the writer
##
Part I
Stillbird
I
“I am lakes trapped in granite caverns
and moss that shrouds the stone…”
Rosie dutifully threw the first clod of grey and sour soil into Jamie’s shallow grave. Jamie’s last dying words to his brother had been not to waste the fertile bottomland on his grave. Bottomland was meant for living things. And then he had slowly and carefully directed Abel to the spot where he desired to be buried. Abel easily located the spot his brother described near an ancient oak tree that had long ago fallen but lived on, held in place by a large boulder that broke the tree’s fall, and that boulder would be Jamie’s tombstone.
Abel was bitter, for it was the spot where they had both first seen Rosie, as gloriously beautiful as the red and golden leaves that drifted from the oak and maple trees, covering the landscape in magic. But Abel set about his task and grimly coaxed a grave from the western West Virginia bedrock. It was an act of love that Rosie would never understand.
Then Abel shoveled in the rest, the soil and small rocks and leaves, for it was autumn again, only the second to pass since Rosie fell in love with Jamie and left her own people to marry him. She took the name he gave her and abandoned the one her own mother had bestowed upon her so carefully and ceremonially. Rosie had put herself among the frightening, albeit occasional, company of white men for love of Jamie. She felt her only safety was their respect for his love of her, and now he was dead and she had no one to protect her. Rosie thought all this with urgency while her body stood impassive by the grave and she poised herself for flight, never letting the slightest movement, the briefest expression in her eyes betray this preparation. Even as she longed to hear her Indian name again, she answered to Rosie.
She had thought, as Jamie lay dying of the fever, that he was abandoning her and she should leave then and save herself. But he kept calling that name that wasn’t really hers but still belonged to their love as long as they were together, and she did love him still and couldn’t bring herself to let him call that name in silence. She sang to him until long after he was stilled and took comfort in the fact that her music eased his pain. He told her this and she knew it was true. He called for his brother and she dreaded going after Abel alone, but Abel came without her summons, as if he’d been listening, and the two men whispered briefly and then Abel went off to dig the grave while Jamie held Rosie’s hand and finished his dying.
Remembering, Rosie realized she could not have left any sooner and she wondered how much longer it would be before Abel would leave her alone so she could change into Jamie’s clothes and make her way, unhampered by skirts, through the night woods to search for her people. Rosie’s people had learned the ways of secrecy early on when they had been herded like cattle across many lands to the west. A few had managed to hide from the United States soldiers and never joined the forced march into exile, and these had lived like ghosts in the wooded hills, moving about like rumors.
But Abel would not leave her alone, worrying about her, loving her as he had always loved her from the first moment he saw her, a vision in the dusky autumn light. Abel would stay to protect her and keep her as his own. He remembered with unfathomable bitterness that when his own mother had been abandoned, no one had stepped forth to claim her as a bride, a married woman in the community. There had been no brothers to undertake this duty for his father and none of the unmarried men of their village had courted her either. And so she had been forced into working as a midwife, bringing other women’s children into the world and risking the fear and contempt of the village, dying finally mysteriously and leaving her two sons to their own uncertain destiny, exiled from their home…exiled…alone…Abel remembered and tried to put it behind him, not wishing to dwell on a past he could not change. Oh but that past had haunted him every waking and sleeping moment if he’d but paid attention. Now he thought only to protect Rosie. He truly did love her.