by Judith Hoch (Author)
2020 Next Generation Indie Book Awards: Best Book Finalist
2020 Ashton Wylie Best Mind, Body, Spirit Book Awards: Best Book Finalist
Lights with no apparent source, heating her back while she walks along a riverbank, initiate American anthropologist Judith Hoch into a decades-long process of spiritual renewal. In this vividly written memoir, Judith describes what happens when she and her husband struggle to restore newly-purchased New Zealand land to native forest. It quickly becomes a spiritual as well as ecological task-and proves far more difficult than she ever anticipated.
In a rare meeting of the Afro-Cuban Lucumi and Aotearoa Māori cultures, Judith uses skills learned as a student of Orisha divination and mediumship to delve into the tragic events that historically impacted the land as she seeks a way to heal it. Guided by her Miami-based padrino, Ernesto Picardo, and working with her Waitaha Māori friend, Aroha Ropata, Judith connects with the land's ancestors and the spiritual forces required for her ecological efforts to succeed.