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  Praise for the Writing of Rudolfo Anaya

  “An extraordinary storyteller.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “One of the nation’s foremost Chicano literary artists.” —The Denver Post

  “[Anaya’s work] is better called not the new multicultural writing, but the new American writing.” —Newsweek

  “One of the best writers in the country.” —El Paso Times

  “The godfather and guru of Chicano literature.” —Tony Hillerman, author of The Blessing Way

  “Poet of the barrio … the most widely read Mexican-American.” —Newsweek

  Alburquerque

  Winner of PEN Center West Award for Fiction

  “Alburquerque is a rich and tempestuous book, full of love and compassion, the complex and exciting skullduggery of politics, and the age-old quest for roots, identity, family … There is a marvelous tapestry of interwoven myth and magic that guides Anaya’s characters’ sensibilities, and is equally important in defining their feel of place. Above all, in this novel is a deep caring for land culture and for the spiritual well-being of people, environment, landscape.” —John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War: A Novel

  “Alburquerque portrays a quest for knowledge.… [It] is a novel about many cultures intersecting at an urban, power-and politics-filled crossroads, represented by a powerful white businessman, whose mother just happens to be a Jew who has hidden her Jewishness … and a boy from the barrio who fathers a child raised in the barrio but who eventually goes on to a triumphant assertion of his cross-cultural self.” —World Literature Today

  “Alburquerque fulfills two important functions: it restores the missing R to the name of the city, and it shows off Anaya’s powers as a novelist.” —National Public Radio

  “Anaya is at his visionary best in creating magical realist moments that connect people with one another and the earth.” —The Review of Contemporary Fiction

  “Anaya’s prowess shows through on every page.… Thumbs up.” —ABQ Arts

  Tortuga

  Winner of the American Book Award

  “A compelling story of a young man who suffers and learns to make peace with who he is, Tortuga has that touch of magic, of fantastical characters, of dreams as real as sunlight, associated with the best of Chicano literature.” —Roundup Magazine

  “Tortuga is one those rare works that speaks to the human condition across time and space, and it well-deserves to find a new generation of readers.” —Southwest BookViews

  “A highly emotional tale of a young soul who turned from a turtle into a human all in the span of 200 pages.” —Reviewers of Young Adult Literature

  My Land Sings

  Winner of the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award

  “Rich in traditional Mexican and native American folklore. Every story spins its magic effectively.” —Booklist

  “Haunting. Compelling twists will keep the pages turning.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Anaya champions the reading of a good book or listening to a folktale as an opportunity to insert one’s own experiences into the story and, hence, to nurture the imagination. This appealing volume will add diversity to folklore collections.” —Booklist

  “The wide variety of stories demonstrate a mature understanding of life’s trappings and dangers, but retain a healthy sense of humor about the human predicament.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Serafina’s Stories

  “[Serafina’s] stories are simple but vivid.… There is magic and mystery too.” —Los Angeles Times

  “Anaya’s prose offers … purity. [Serafina’s Stories] will restore to all but the most jaded reader a necessary sense of wonder.” —National Public Radio

  “Like Serafina, Anaya is a powerful storyteller whose cuentos and other writings are a balm for the soul.” —New Mexico Magazine

  “It is not hard to predict that Serafina’s story will be hypnotic and entertain.… With Serafina’s Stories Anaya again reminds us of the importance of maintaining an oral tradition.” —San Antonio Express-News

  “Rudolfo Anaya is both a wise man and a gifted storyteller. Serafina’s Stories [is] a series of engaging tales.” —Santa Fe New Mexican

  “Anaya’s new book is a spellbinding account of a Native American woman who spins tales to enlighten the Spanish governor into setting her people free. Clearly conceived, Serafina’s Stories contains 12 folk tales that are as absorbing as the main plot.” —El Paso Times

  Heart of Aztlan

  “In Heart of Aztlan, a prose writer with the soul of poet, and a dedication to his calling that only the greatest artists ever sustain, is on an important track, the right one, the only one.” —La Confluencia

  “[Heart of Aztlan gives] a vivid sense of Chicano life since World War II.” —World Literature Today

  “Mixed with the Native American legends and Hispanic traditions of this wonderful book are the basic human motivations that touch all cultures. It is a rip-roaring good read.” —Cibola Beacon

  Jalamanta

  “A parable for our time … We are in deep need of simple truths, of rediscovering our ancient teachings, and Jalamanta may provide that opportunity.” —The Washington Post Book World

  Zia Summer

  “A compelling thriller … Though satisfying purely as a mystery, the novel sacrifices none of Anaya’s trademark spirituality—a connectedness to the earth and a deep-seated respect for the traditions of a people and a culture.… Read this multicultural novel for its rich language and full-bodied characters. Anaya is one of our greatest storytellers, and Zia Summer is muy caliente!” —Booklist

  “[Anaya] continues to shine brightest with his trademark alchemy: blending Spanish, Mexican, and Indian cultures to evoke the distinctively fecund spiritual terrain of his part of the Southwest.” —Publishers Weekly

  Rio Grande Fall

  “This is a completely entertaining mystery novel, but Anaya offers two parallel lands of enchantment. One is temporal New Mexico; the other is Nuevo Mexicano, a land of santos, milagros, spirits, visions, and even brujas (witches).” —Booklist

  Shaman Winter

  “Be aware that if you only skate on the surface, you will miss the depth of the story. You have to dive head-first, literally, into the waves of poetic prose to catch a glimpse of the forces that keep our universe together.” —La Voz

  “The fast-paced story line of Shaman Winter is fascinating and absolutely eerie as the master paints a vivid picture of the spirituality of another culture.” —Thrilling Detective

  Jemez Spring

  “Jemez Spring is meant to appeal to readers of conventional mystery novels, but there is nothing conventional about it.… It taps into primal and universal fears and longings but plays them out in a uniquely New Mexican setting. And the master tells his tales with worlds and images so rich and strange that it is almost as if he had invented a language of his own.” —Los Angeles Times

  “Jemez Spring again blends the Spanish, Mexican, and Indian cultures that made the three earlier works in the series such good reads. Anaya is at his best when writing about the people of New Mexico, their traditions and their lives and how they clash with the influx of Anglos.” —San Antonio Express-News

  “Anaya takes the reader beyond detective fiction.… His mysteries fall into the criminal and the spiritual, which makes them both inspiring and electrifying.” —St. Petersburg Times

  “Unique and exciting … Readers thirsty for philosophy and the supernatural will devour this book.” —Daily Camera (Boulder)
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br />   “Anaya, godfather and guru of Chicano literature, proves he’s just as good in the murder mystery field.” —Tony Hillerman, author of The Blessing Way

  Shaman Winter

  A Sonny Baca Novel

  Rudolfo Anaya

  To the ancestors,

  who brought their dreams

  to New Mexico.

  PREFACE

  Dreams are an important ingredient in most of my stories. Many readers have expressed a deep interest in Antonio’s dreams in Bless Me, Ultima.

  Here, in Sonny Baca’s third adventure, he is drawn into the dreamworld not only to understand his past but to become master of his dreams, a shaman. Writing this novel took me into the world of the shaman, those traditional healers who help shattered souls become whole again.

  Most will say that we cannot order our dreams, but we can understand the characters and language of dreams. We all have this shamanic gift that sheds light on our dreams, and we can use the dream messages to provide harmony for that deep essence that is the soul.

  Perhaps in a world ruled by empirical science, Sonny’s descent into the dreamworld will seem anachronistic. We do not live in the shaman’s world. That may be true, but we all dream. We live in our unconscious as much as in our consciousness. If we are to truly know ourselves we must know our dreams, that world which is called the underworld in world mythologies.

  In the previous novel, Rio Grande Fall, Sonny is injured. I choose to have him in a wheelchair because the person who is physically handicapped has also been one of my themes. So often we think of “getting well” as only a physical challenge. But getting well also involves the psyche. Both body and soul seek a harmonious existence.

  Traditional healing practices and modern medicine, both help. Exploring dreams and what they tell us also helps. Someday we may come to a more total and unified way of understanding ourselves. In the meantime we seek meaning not only in ordinary reality but also in dreams. The challenges of life require this unified approach.

  I want to thank the University of New Mexico Press for reissuing the four Sonny Baca novels. The kind and professional efforts of UNM Press ensures that my work and that of many of our writers will remain in print.

  —Rudolfo Anaya

  PART 1

  THE SHAMAN DREAMS

  1

  Sonny awakened with a cry tearing from his throat. “Aaaowl W’oooman!”

  He reached for her, feeling she was within his reach, just beyond the luminous light of the doorway, but the dream was already fading.

  “Híjola,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes and struggling to sit up. A dream, but it seemed so real.

  He shivered. His bedroom was cold.

  He looked around, half expecting to see the desert scene of the dream; instead, he was enveloped in the soft aura of a December dawn flooding through his window. He had startled Chica. She peered from the blankets where she lay snuggled, looking at him with an understanding expression.

  “Qué pasa?” her seal-like eyes seemed to ask.

  “It’s okay, Chica, just a dream,” he said, petted her, and lay back into his pillow.

  Chica was the red dachshund that had appeared in the neighborhood. Don Eliseo, Sonny’s neighbor, took her in and fed her, but she insisted on making her home with Sonny.

  “She’s lost,” the old man said. “I fed her, but she keeps coming to your door.”

  “Let her stay,” Sonny said. Don Eliseo had set up a box for her to sleep in, but every night she jumped on the bed and burrowed beneath the blankets.

  Sonny reached for the notebook on the bed stand. During the past few months his dreams had been very real, and don Eliseo had suggested that he record them. The old man was teaching Sonny how to construct his dreams.

  “A person can actually be in charge of their dreams,” the old man said.

  Sonny doubted him at first. Dreams were supposed to be incoherent, random images that came out of nowhere. Symbols that needed to be interpreted. How could one order one’s dreams?

  “When you enter the dream, you leave this world,” don Eliseo replied. “The two worlds are connected by a luminous door. You are the master of your life in this world, so you can be the master of your dreams.”

  Sonny followed his instructions, and he had become adept at it. Dreams that used to come as jumbled images now came as stories that somehow Sonny began to manipulate even as he dreamed.

  “Let’s see,” he whispered, wetting the tip of the pencil with his tongue, and then began to record the dream.

  In the dream I was a Spanish soldier named Andres Vaca. I was with Oñate on the banks of the Río Grande just before he started his march into New Mexico in 1598 …

  He paused and saw himself again, standing on the sandy banks of the river, staring across the slow-moving, muddy waters. To the north lay the unknown province, that huge expanse of land the earlier Spanish explorers referred to as La Nueva México.

  Oñate’s expedition had come north from Mexico to the banks of the Río Bravo, as it was called on some of the early maps, near a place called El Paso del Norte. From the valley of San Bartolomé in Nueva Viscaya, they had traveled, journeying north to the promised land, la tierra adentro, the land of Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado, and the other earlier Spanish explorers. Behind them lay the desert of Chihuahua.

  Andres stood looking north, Sonny wrote, wearing a white shirt and black pantaloons and the helmet and breastplate of a soldier. For the soldiers and families who had come with don Juan, this was more than a new adventure, it was a chance for a new life. They realized there were many more dangers to be faced as they crossed the desert called la Jornada del Muerto, but the explorers were eager and expectant.

  The vision of what La Nueva México promised was a constant inducement for the weary members of the expedition. For the men the possibility of finding gold meant they could be hidalgos, hijos de algo. They could acquire land and a proper title, something they could never hope for in Spain or México. Yes, the life of a landed gentleman was worth risking one’s life for. Even the adelantado Oñate dreamed of finding rich mines to rival those of Zacatecas.

  On the other hand, the goal of the Franciscan friars who accompanied the expedition was to save pagan souls, the souls of the many Indian tribes described by Cabeza de Vaca, Fray Niza, and Coronado. Already the friars had been busy preparing the natives of the region for baptism.

  Andres sniffed the clean desert air and smiled. Let the friars do their work—he had other things on his mind. Behind him, in the camp, he heard the sounds of the men preparing for the wedding ceremony. A smile lingered on his lips and lit his brown eyes. This evening he would marry a young woman, the one the tribe called Owl Woman. The friars would baptize her, give her a Christian name, and she and Andres would be married. He felt rejuvenated in his purpose for going north. Now he would have a wife by his side, and he would raise a family in those unknown lands.

  Sons and daughters to populate the land. Sons and daughters to build villages and make peace with the Pueblo Indians of the north. He had had enough of the gold-induced carnage that had swept over México like a plague. He was a soldier, and he had done his share of murdering, but an apparition had come to him one day on the field of battle. A woman dressed in blue appeared and told him to go north to meet his destiny. He was to put away the sword and become a farmer. Andres resisted the apparition’s words, and the next day he was wounded in battle. Near death’s door he again saw the woman, and she repeated her message: Go north into the new land, put away your sword, and turn to the earth for your sustenance.

  He had heard the stories of the great Coronado, and he knew that in the northern mountains lay meadows where cattle and sheep would thrive. Fields of corn and vineyards would fill the valleys. The woman’s voice induced these images, and Andres Vaca said, Yes, I will follow this path. It is meant to be.

  The horses in the remuda whinnied. Perhaps they sensed a desert coyote moving in the sandhills. A cool breeze drifted across the
river, and on the branches of a cottonwood tree a large raven landed.

  “In the dream I was Andres Vaca,” Sonny said to Chica.

  Don Eliseo had said, “Dreams are a journey into the world of spirits. Since it is your journey, you must construct the dream. Do not be at the mercy of other forces that come to tamper with your dream. With practice, it may be that someday you may become master of your dream. Many are masters of this material world and learn to manipulate it to their desire. But few become masters of their dreams.”

  The old man knows about dreams, Sonny thought and returned to his notes.

  Someone approached Andres Vaca.

  Buenas tardes, Capitán Vaca, the man called.

  Buenas tardes, General, Andres Vaca replied, turning to greet Juan Pérez de Oñate, the newly appointed governor of New Mexico.

  Forgive me for interrupting your reverie, Andres, Oñate said, addressing the young man informally.

  Not at all, Andres Vaca replied. In my contemplation I was merely enjoying these last moments as a single man.

  Oñate smiled. You are marrying an exceptional woman. With her at your side, I am sure destiny will treat you kindly.

  I was looking to the north and imagining the great adventure that awaits us, Andres replied.

  Yes, Oñate said. On an evening like this I also am filled with the desire to see the northern mountains. Following the Great River of the North, this Río Bravo, we will find a mountain range called the Sangre de Cristo. There in those valleys we will settle.

  Andres nodded.

  The journey has been long and difficult, Oñate continued. Now we stand on the banks of this river, the same river described by Coronado. To the north lies the province of La Nueva México. Land that His Royal Highness has commanded us to conquer and settle. We are to pacify and Christianize los indios. The Crusaders who saved Jerusalem from the heathen Muslim could not have had a greater purpose.