DLF: Within the narrative, Concha is vehemently against her mother passing on the stories to Elena. Her refusal to deal with the past leads to a rupture between herself and Mati, the keeper of stories. But once Mati is gone, Con-cha finds herself adrift, directionless. She is totally lost until Elena brings her the stone, the symbol of their past and their continuity. It is only when she is strong enough to embrace the past that Mati had always offered her that she begins to heal. That is the great lesson of the narrative. One can’t escape who we are or where we’ve come from. It is all an integral part of who we are. Until we come to that realization and embrace the past, we will find forging the future much more difficult.

I hope that my work encourages readers to find their own paths back to their beginnings as far as they can go. Not all will lead to Africa. The quest may lead to the American south or India or Asia or Europe. Not everyone will have the wherewithal to go back that far. But we can all mine the memories of the elders in our midst. We have a lot to learn from those who walked this earth before us. After all, it is because of their experiences that we are here. I think any time we build a strong foundation (seek out the past) we have a bet-ter chance of building a structure that will hold. You don’t have to agree with everything or even agree with what you find. But wouldn’t it be great just to know? Once you have the information, you can use it in whatever way is most beneficial. When you search just remember that what you find will not be all pleasantries and triumphs. There will be hurt and loss and tragedy. It is the nature of life. We can learn even more from the travails than from the victories.

Another consideration, sometimes elders don’t want to think about the negative aspects of their lives, or they think they will be protecting you from hurt. All families have skeletons in the closet, secrets that someone has felt is best left untold. That door may shut tightly against your inquiry. People are entitled to their privacy. But you can always work on it until they let you in to whatever degree they can. After all, by sharing their story, even a very painful one, they will be helping you. Perhaps their love for the questioner will super-sede their fears of the past coming back to haunt them. Recently I read a quo-tation that I love. “Every time an elder dies, we lose a library.” I do believe that.

As the author, Carisa uses the prologue to introduce the novel as a col-lection of stories that belong to the women in her family, because she is the