Samuel DenHartog's Blog: The Road to 1,440 - Posts Tagged "skinwalker"

When I began shaping this story, I knew I wanted to explore the moment when harmony breaks and what might grow in the silence that follows. The book follows a young Diné (Navajo) Medicine Man whose life begins in balance, deeply rooted in tradition, family, and the sacred songs that shape his world. His bond with his twin brother is nearly unshakable, and their childhood in the high desert is filled with ceremony, laughter, and the early signs of who they will become. But when love and jealousy collide, that bond shatters in a single moment of violence.

What follows is not just a fall from grace but a transformation that crosses the lines between human and animal, body and spirit. The man we once knew becomes something else entirely. He walks roads far from his people and far from the name he once carried, changing in ways both physical and spiritual. These transformations are not gifts. They are consequences. Each one reflects a new stage of exile and a new way the world fears or misunderstands what he has become.

This story lives at the edge of Diné belief, where beauty and balance guide the living, and the consequences of breaking that harmony ripple outward like a cracked drum. I spent a great deal of time researching traditional songs, ceremonies, and mythic figures to echo their gravity within a fictional framework. My aim was not to define what a Skinwalker is, but to imagine what kind of man might walk that road.

By the final chapter, the man walks where names no longer follow. Whether or not there is peace is left for the reader to decide. This is not a tale of redemption, but one of reckoning, shaped by the weight of what cannot be undone. That is the story at the heart of "Skinwalker Rising."