TOTEM - Setting and Synopsis
Though they suffered under Spanish rule and spiritual persecution for many years and more recent forced "American" boarding school education in the last century, the Hopi never budged from their rocky perch atop the three mesas where their villages are located still. Permanent residency has its advantages, especially when secret masks of power lay hidden nearby.
Tosh Cloudtree is Hopi--well, half-Hopi. The village will never let him forget his father came from another tribe in the Seattle area and that he is the son of an outsider. Yet somehow Tosh's overachieving brother, Calvin, is revered as a future leader of the village. Well, whatever. Tosh wants to be a famous artist and dream about other worlds…at least until his actual dreams take a sudden turn toward prophetic visions.
Read the unpublished 5 page original prologue of Totem
Tosh Cloudtree is Hopi--well, half-Hopi. The village will never let him forget his father came from another tribe in the Seattle area and that he is the son of an outsider. Yet somehow Tosh's overachieving brother, Calvin, is revered as a future leader of the village. Well, whatever. Tosh wants to be a famous artist and dream about other worlds…at least until his actual dreams take a sudden turn toward prophetic visions.
Read the unpublished 5 page original prologue of Totem
Seattle, Washington.
Tosh Cloudtree's story begins in the great city of Seattle.Though raised Hopi, Tosh and his brother seek out the home of their father who long abandoned them. His Skokomish tribe is nearby and their ancestral land is being threatened by a corporation and a government waste removal program.
Tosh Cloudtree's story begins in the great city of Seattle.Though raised Hopi, Tosh and his brother seek out the home of their father who long abandoned them. His Skokomish tribe is nearby and their ancestral land is being threatened by a corporation and a government waste removal program.
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Tosh's dreams began in the Northwest, near the cold water and the deep woods. This was not his home, but the land of his father's people and where he decided to enroll at the Seattle Art Institute.
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The Hopi Reservation, Northern Arizona
Tosh and his brother grew up with his mother's Hopi tribe, on the mesas of Hopi. But these barren rocks contain more than meets the eye, as Tosh learns.
Tosh and his brother grew up with his mother's Hopi tribe, on the mesas of Hopi. But these barren rocks contain more than meets the eye, as Tosh learns.
Legends and Lore
The Hopi have a rich, complex, and multi-layered spirituality. During research for Totem, I was astounded how deep the theology ran, and how interwoven it was into every-day life.