Elroy is a Navajo Medicine Man from Arizona, and he needs a kidney transplant. Valerie is an author, writer and speech pathologist from Australia who needs to write his story. Buy this book so Elroy can get his kidney transplant. Read this narrative because it celebrates life and acceptance of life on all levels. Elroy shares his medicine and Valerie crafts his stories into his medicine for us to take in as we read his words that are fervent prayers; mystical chants dancing into our hearts so we might experience a meeting of healing with Elroy, The Medicine Man.

I read most of this book as the day was folding into the dark and finished it in the morning of rain. I am super critical of books because I require the books to move me in my heart, so learning, feeling, and transformation happens. The book must tell a beautiful story. This book does all of these things, and I’ll read it over and over from now on because it is a meditation and a ballad of acceptance even with pain, injustice, and disability because Elroy is in a wheelchair and can’t walk. You get to live life thru Elroy’s storytelling of living his life as a medicine man and what that means for him in all life stages. If you are familiar with Songlines, the 1987 book written by Bruce Chatwin, about the aborigines in Australia, consider this book as a counterpart with a Navajo Medicine Man. Buy the book for all these reasons and have an experience you could not get anywhere else.

I met Valerie at a UW Nursing Continuing Education Conference in 2010 in Shoreline, WA. I was promoting pharmaceuticals, and she was promoting her first book, Search for Mother. Our tables were side by side, and we talked the entire day. She was living in a home a block away from me, and I drove her home. We continued our conversation on the way home and into the next day at my home before she left to go to Arizona to interview Elroy. Since then, we’ve continued our friendship and have supported each other’s growth and acceptance in the honest truth of who we are. I have been an occupationaltherapist for as long as Valerie’s been a speech therapist and both of us utilized holistic and alternative medicine in our practices.I no longer work for Pharma. Instead, I am a writer and own a company that helps people turn their stories into books. Your story telling turned into books is powerful medicine.

Get this book and be riveted by what Elroy shows you.

 

Listen Here

 

 Book Review The Story Behind The Story