Cold Morning Shadow

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An upbeat family saga, Cold Morning Shadow begins as four teenagers in rural South Dakota are laying the cornerstones for lasting friendships in the late 1960s. Cyleine, an off-reservation member of the Oglala Lakota, and her brother, Lionel, befriend Wilton and his sister, “Rockie,” post-European newcomers just moved from urban Virginia. One of the girls, whose heedlessly unfiltered utterances melt hearts and barriers, is imperturbable and obliviously alluring. The other, secretly daring and agonizingly sentimental, is a connoisseur of numbers and words. One of the boys is outwardly fierce but privately gentle, the other quietly observant and disastrously cautious. One of the four, a visionary, transforms the family business. One, who is deaf but not as helpless as it might sound, becomes penpals with President Nixon. One organizes stray thoughts, the family’s horses, and the people who matter most. And one, who wants to propose marriage but can’t find the words, is branded a deserter in Vietnam. The story dares ask, with optimism: What if things that seem doomed turn out for the better instead? What if forbearance and human kindness prevail? What if disaster is not merely averted but vanquished? What’s wrong, after all, with a happy ending that is then the beginning of what is yet to come?