The Inspiration for Mining Sacred Ground
What inspired me to write Mining Sacred Ground? Was it love of the
West, love of its hard reality or its glorified mythology? Mostly, my
inspiration is found in its people.
It is difficult for anyone to look into the
minds of others, unless one is a novelist. In fiction we can capture the hopes
and aspirations of people who are still victimized by forces over which they
have no control. Until they take control.
In fiction we can explore the minds of
those who wish to fight back. History is full of men like that: Crazy Horse,
Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Tecumseh, to
name just a few. History and fiction have both idolized these heroes and to
this pantheon of rebels I add my own fictional hero, Peter Romero.
As Romero may attest, Native Americans
are beset by a number of grave problems, not the least of which is theft of
their remaining land. Miners, ranchers, even governments find compelling
reasons to acquire native lands, some of them sacred, for purposes other than
the sustainment of the original inhabitants. This process, started in 1492, has
continued to this day. Today there are only 52 million acres left from the
original American Indian homeland of the about 6.1 billion acres in North
America. Yet, Indian people endure. Romero knows this must stop.
Romero and others like him remind me of
the old Frank Sinatra song, High Hopes,
a song about a goat and a dam. “Once there was a silly old ram, thought he’d
punch a hole in a dam…”. You may remember the dam crumbled.
Romero and other Native Americans I know
characterize what I think is one of humankind’s greatest attributes: perseverance. The dictionary defines it this way: continue
in a course of action even in the face of difficulty or with little or no
indication of success.
Romero is a bull-headed man. He knows
what is right but, most of all, he does not know how to quit. Perseverance
inspires me and also reminds me of many of the Marines I had the privilege to
serve with for twenty years. These people were winners under extraordinary
difficulties. Why? They did not know how to quit.
John
Wooden said it well: "It's not so important who
starts the game but who finishes it."
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pages for Mining Sacred Ground:
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home page:
Blurb:
Ancestral spirits demand that Marine veteran Peter
Romero protect the secrecy of a sacred burial ground, and the world becomes a
stranger place than he’d ever understood. He is pitted against a psychotic
anthropology professor in a life-and-death struggle through the hills, arroyos,
and caves of central Arizona, and into another world.
When Romero’s cousin is murdered, the former military policeman is astonished that the local sheriff shows no enthusiasm for solving the crime. He is forced to recognize that, after a military career, greater danger lies ahead in his civilian life.
When Romero’s cousin is murdered, the former military policeman is astonished that the local sheriff shows no enthusiasm for solving the crime. He is forced to recognize that, after a military career, greater danger lies ahead in his civilian life.
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