Book Description
1) The mystical things my sons told me when they were very little about their past lives and where they were before they were born. Their striking stories led me to ponder questions of identity — who are we really, what does the knowledge of past lives bring to the present, and why?
2) I wrote this book as a tribute to my mother and grandmother. My grandmother was orphaned when her mother died in childbirth. My mother tried in vain to trace my grandmother's origins in Panama. Her search turned up very few clues. I hardly knew my grandmother, but I always remember the empty look on her face, her far away eyes. I attributed that look to her lost ancestry. With the few facts I knew about my grandmother I began right then to create a story for her, as a way to give her a history.
In the end, the process of weaving SONG OF THE SHAMAN'S historical love story with the contemporary single mother's search for her origins transformed me as a writer and storyteller.