Jack Rabbit

by Jan Kelly

Navajo Monster Slayer myths are threaded through the story of the runaway Rose, now sixteen, and Jack Rawlings’ cattle ranching family who live near Winslow in northern Arizona. Jack’s cancer diagnosis sends him reeling, and feeling ranching life in the west is ending with his own, he undertakes a vigilante mission only to disappear on the Navajo reservation after falling into an abandoned kiva. His shy, bookish daughter, Kate, authors her own version of events, focusing on her courtship and marriage to the school teacher, Richard, and culminating in the birth of their child, Grace Elizabeth, named after the previous two generations of Arizona pioneer women. Jack is raised from the kiva just as Grace enters the world, and although Rose believes the Arabian stallion she ran away on was drowned in the flash flood that ended Elder Brother’s Maze, she finds redemption in her adoption by Jack’s family.

215 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 9, 2018