International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award

"...my father named me Omishto. It means the One Who Watches, but nowadays most everyone just calls me Sis or girl. But it's true, I watch everything and see deep into what's around me. I have a strong wind inside me, is what Grandma said. A wind with eyes. They used to call it the spirit, the breath, and the name we have for it is Oni. I feel lives and spirits in the woods, and I see the growing things. But I can't see what is watching me from the trees. Still, I am careful in the way I move, not to be caught unawares, not to turn my back on it." This is the voice of Omishto, the sixteen-year-old narrator of this mythical, far-reaching masterpiece from one of our best Native American writers. The novel opens on the night of an ominous storm. Omishto witnesses her Aunt Ama kill a panther - an animal considered to be a sacred ancestor of the Taiga people. That single act will have profound consequences for Omishto. Suddenly, she is torn between her loyalties to her westernized mother, who wants her to reject the ways of the tribe, and to Ama and her traditional people, for whom the killing of the panther takes on grave importance. But Omishto's quest in this timeless, lyrical novel goes far deeper. As she tries to understand the mystery that lies behind Ama's actions, she must reckon with her own spiritual connection to her people, to nature, and to the world itself. This is an extraordianry work about a young girl at a crossroads who must determine her place in the world. Spellbinding and unforgettable, Power will endure as a classic - ensuring Linda Hogan's stature as one of this country's most important and urgent writers.
Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw poet, novelist, and essayist. Her book Seeing Through the Sun received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Mean Spirit won the Oklahoma Book Award as well as the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.Her book Solar Storms was nominated for the 1997 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The recent Book of Medicine has received much attention and was a recipient of the Colorado Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Hogan has also been the recipient of an NEA grant and a Minnesota Arts Board Grant, a Lannan award, a Colorado Writer's Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Five Civilized Tribes Museum Playwriting Award. She is a professor at the University of Colorado, has served on the National Endowment for the Arts poetry panel for two years, and has been involved in wildlife rehabilitation as a volunteer.

Power by Linda Hogan Nominated by:

Power by
Linda Hogan

Nominated by: