Two Canoes Press

Reviews

Compass of the Heart: A Novel of Discovery by Priscilla Cogan

Second Book of the Winona Series

One Spirit Club Book of the Month Club feature, summer 2003

"Love is very tricky," warns Winona Pathfinder, the elderly Sioux medicine woman who has introduced psychologist Meggie O'Connor to the spiritual ways of Lakota prayer and healing.  Soon, however, Meggie's teacher and friend will cross over the Other Side, leaving Meggie, just forty and newly divorced, to make her way on her own.  But before she goes, Winona nudges her younger cousin Hawk to walk alongside Meggie on a journey of the heart and soul.  It is this story that is at the center of Compass of the Heart. Priscilla Cogan, best-selling author of Winona's Web, winner of the Small Press Book Award, is the weaver of this lyrical, incandescent tale of love in all the directions.

With the enigmatic words "It's a teaching pipe.  Maybe, just maybe, she'll have the luck I did and meet a man worthy of her spirit," Winona asks Hawk to give Meggie her lightning pipe. This gift marks the beginning of Hawk and Meggie's relationship.  As they turn toward the seven directions of prayer, the Pipe calls forth the Spirits, and leads both Hawk and Meggie deeper into a world of sacred mystery.  For the first time in years, levelheaded Meggie has to reckon with romance and the risk of passion. Hawk, a medicine teacher like his cousin, is torn between his love for the white woman and his loyalty to the red road.  Wary yet optimistic, these two seek out the Pipe Road--the path that will lead them to harmony with the world and with each other.

All the while, Winona watches over them and their circle of friends and family.  Children scar and heal, husbands betray pained wives, aged sisters ease into the late afternoon of their lives, and animals teach the human beings the true meaning of sacrifice.

Love may be very tricky, they all eventually discover, but it's a road that can be navigated with faith and hope.  "Maybe we don't have to circle round and round in life," muses Meggie, "chasing the ancient tales. I'd rather warm myself in the creation of a new story."  Filled with Cogan's sensuous, intimate renderings of Native American ceremony and custom, as well as her compassion for her characters (whether man or man's best friends), Compass of the Heart is that magical new story, a novel of great insight and artistry.

So different, yet so familiar!, May 26, 2002 --  "eye-sus" (Sweden)
This was the first of Priscilla's books that I came in contact with and I was pleasantly surprised and I got impressed later on in the book. Impressed because it isn't often that you find an American author that cites an old Swedish song. One that just so happens my parents sung to me as a child and that I've always loved highly. Being a Swede that has never crossed the ocean in that direction, I found it very helpful to read her books to get just a little peek into the native American people, that you see in various films all the time and hear quite a bit about, but never this personal. I am grateful for this chance to look into their ceremonies closely and get inside another persons experience with them, from both a native American and a non-native American perspective.

That on one hand and then Priscilla being a psychologist and writing about a western psychologist's meeting with these traditions and ceremonies, was superb to me.

So different but yet so familiar.  -Yes, she's got it all covered so well, that although Meggie recons these things are all knew and she has her own beliefs, because of her psychological education you can not help but feel that what is happening in this book is all very usual and every-day kind of things. Priscilla deals with all of Meggie's questions and therefore she also deals with my own questioning as a reader. The feeling, a long time after reading her book is that it is perfectly normal and nothing out of the ordinary going on in it. Not all psychologists manage to make me feel at such ease with things the way Priscilla does, which is an excellent skill. The skill of integrating a western type of societal hierarchy with tribalism. That and Christianity along with naturalistic belief's without to much of a clutch can really be something to master.

"...WE ARE ALL IN THIS CREATION TOGETHER....", January 8, 2001 -- Gail Cooke (Texas)

As in psychologist Priscilla Cogan's debut novel, "Winona's Web," which was praised for its noteworthy depiction of Native American beliefs and customs, Compass Of The Heart, also invites readers into a world of little known rituals. This is a place where individuals struggle to maintain tradition amid America's homogeneous secularity, and where spirits of the dead materialize to instruct, advise, or sometimes tease.

With a cross-cultural romance as her springboard, the author probes the minds and hearts of those with one foot in the past and another in the present. A practitioner of Native American rituals, such as pipe and sweat-lodge ceremonies, Ms. Cogan is an Irish-American who joins her Cherokee husband to teach workshops pertaining to these healing practices. Thus, she brings an informed eye to her novel's setting.

Hawk, a medicine man, has come to upstate Michigan, "to the tiny Ojibwa and Ottawa reservation of Peshawbestown" to study with Winona, an aged teacher. She not only instructs but tells him of her imminent death, saying it is time for her spirit to go home. Winona asks that Hawk give her pipe to a divorced psychologist, Meggie O'Connor, who employs him as a part-time handyman. When Hawk protests that she is a white woman, Winona replies, "She is a woman of good heart."

A divorcee of 40, Meggie is attracted to Hawk, and they soon become lovers. To the obvious chagrin of other tribes people Hawk invites Meggie to be a doorkeep at an Inipi, a therapeutic sweat lodge ceremony for which the men gather in a hut heated by steam from water poured on red hot stones, believing that the excessive perspiration washes away "that which was false and unclean." It is also at this Inipi that Hawk receives instructions from a former teacher, now dead and living in the Spirit world.

It is at such a point that those with less than an avid interest in the minutia of ritual may feel the story's pace flounders, as plot turns to podium for the advocacy of the author's beliefs.

Nonetheless, the blossoming relationship between Hawk and Meggie is truncated by the unexpected arrival of beautiful Rising Smoke, the medicine man's ex-wife. As old desires reawaken, Hawk believes himself to be in love with two women. To further complicate matters, Meggie discovers she is pregnant.

Winona, meanwhile, is caught between worlds, awaiting with impatience her new life as she observes the interplay between Hawk and the white psychologist. Disgruntled with the people "Back There," Winona mutters of Hawk, "What he needs is a good kick in the butt," and hisses to Meggie, "Go fight for your man! She (Winona) never could understand white people with all their confusion about what was important."

Only a return to his former home and the ministrations of another teacher enable Hawk to choose between the two women. Discarded again, Rising Smoke wrecks vengeance on an unsuspecting Meggie.

Alternating narrative voices, among which are Fritzi, a white furred terrier, proves to be cumbersome. While peripheral characters whose motivation is unclear, and whose plights are left largely unresolved tends to puzzle.

However, there is much to be learned about Native American tradition in Compass Of The Heart, and Meggie's Thanksgiving toast is a valuable reminder: "I would like us to remember that people of different races can come together, help each other, teach each other, and celebrate their differences.....Rooted in this continent, the native people taught and continue to teach respect for the land and all its inhabitants, the truth that we are all in this Creation together."

10 Stars for Compass of the Heart, October 17, 2001  -- Lady Stardancer (Cary, NC)
Many thanks to Priscilla Cogan for writing this beautiful book continuing to weave the story of Winona, Meggie O'Connor and Hawk. Not only is this a wonderful love story, but a story that allows the reader to learn about beautiful Lakota traditions.

I fell in love with this book and didn't want it to end. It was a story of relationships at many different levels. The growing love between Meggie and Hawk, the Lakota wisdom Winona shared with her Grandson Adam, and the struggling relationship between Wynona and her daughter Lucy, who in many ways rejected her Lakota heritage. It was simply beautiful, and I couldn't put it down.

If reviews had a 10-star rating, that would be my pick for Compass of the Heart

For More Information Contact:

Two Canoes Press
PO Box 334, Hopkinton, MA 01748
Internet:  TwoCanoesPress@TwoCanoesPress

[ Home ] [ Up ]

Send mail to ITdept@TwoCanoesPress with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2008 Two Canoes Press