A Sky Without Stars by Linda S. Clare

After her husband is killed in a bar fight, Frankie Chasing Bear and her son, Harold, move to Phoenix to start over, but it isn't easy for a young, broke, Native American woman to build a life in 1951 America. 

Nick Parker, a half-breed Federal Agent wants to come to Frankie's aid, but fears that her trust issues may prohibit a relationship. He is also in a struggle to stay sober.

One of the remnants of the Lakota culture is the Lakota Star quilt, which Frankie is creating for ten year old Harold to remind him of the generations of ancestors that have gone before. 

Prejudice is also alive and well, and opportunities for education and a shot at the American dream come at a high personal cost. 

A Sky Without Stars challenged me to think about how to effectively reach people of other cultures with the love that Jesus came to earth to give. I cringed on a number of occasions when Frankie's story included encounters with white people who believed that assimilating into contemporary American culture meant obliterating the Native ways altogether, in a manner so condescending and rude that it's no wonder enmity seems to prevail.

Author Linda S. Clare was inspired by her Cherokee/Choctaw heritage and her childhood memories of Arizona, to create character Frankie Chasing Bear's story. I'm so glad she did.

For more information on this "Quilts of Love" winner, read on!

This week, the

Christian Fiction Blog Alliance

is introducing

A Sky Without Stars

Abingdon Press (February 18, 2014)

by

Linda S. Clare

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

Linda S. Clare is an

award-winning author and coauthor of several books and has also

published many essays, stories, and poems in publications, including The

Christian Reader, The Denver Post

, and The

Philadelphia Inquirer

. Her most recent book is A

Sky without Stars

, the newest release in Abingdon’s Quilts of

Love line. Born in Arizona, Linda and her husband now make their home

in Eugene, Oregon, where Linda has taught college-level creative

writing classes, and writes, edits, and mentors other writers. She also

is a frequent writing conference presenter, a church retreat leader,

and mom to four grown children and five wayward cats. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Frankie Chasing Bear is caught between cultures. She wants to raise her son Harold to revere his Lakota heritage, but she also thinks he will need to learn the white man’s ways to succeed. After the untimely death of her husband, Frankie joins the U.S. Government’s Relocation Program and moves to Arizona. There she begins sewing a Lakota Star pattern quilt for Harold with tribal wisdom sung, sewn, and prayed into it. 

A bed without a quilt is like a sky without stars, but neither the quilt—nor her new life—comes easily to Frankie. Nick Vandergriff, for instance, is the last man Frankie wants to trust. He’s half-Lakota but Christian, and Frankie can see no good coming from that faith after her own parents were forced to convert at an Indian school. Can Nick convince Frankie that white men and Christians aren’t all bad? And will Frankie learn that love is the most important ingredient—for her son’s quilt and life itself?

If you would like to read the first chapter of A Sky Without Stars, go HERE.