La Vieja: A Journal of Fire

by DEENA METZGER

Who is La Vieja? When writer Deena Metzger first began to receive “inexplicable communications” from La Vieja, she knew very little about her. Over time it became clear that the old woman was a seer, seemingly real, but spirit-like, who had taken permanent residence in a fire lookout tower in the Sierras of California. Her watch there took on a great significance in this time of climate destruction, pandemic, and the possibility of the extinction of the natural world. There, La Vieja’s senses began to sharpen, turning toward a greater connection with the intelligence of the natural world, including the bears and the surrounding trees. Two other characters emerged from this contact: Lucas, a doctor who also loves to retreat to a little-used fire tower, and Léonie, a librarian/stonemason who has a lifelong dreaming connection to the Bears. The two meet and fall in love, and retreat to a similar forest world as their story becomes entwined with the world of La Vieja in an overlapping of realities.  Part dream, part real, part memoir, Metzger’s La Vieja blurs the boundaries between human consciousness and animal consciousness, of imagination and reality, to create a “Journal of Fire,” a recording of the process of living with the constant threat of the destruction of the natural world. And yet, it finds hope by making new connections that lead us toward a liberation from human domination, toward renewal and a vision of the future where humans and the natural world are integral parts of a whole, intermingling and interdependent, where human nature and animal nature are inclusive of each other.

—G. A. Bradshaw, Author of Elephants on the Edge, Carnivore Minds, Talking with Bears: Conversations with Charlie Russell, and founder of trans-species psychology

“Unknowingly and suddenly, we are traveling through interpenetrating realms  after reading only a page or two, where time, space and place have vanished into one. Author Deena Metzger emerges at our side, a companionable guide in the magical reality of La Vieja. It is a book of the times, vital for the times, bringing us back to our senses and the ineffability of life on this precious planet.”

—Ariel Dorfman, author of Death and the Maiden, and the novels Cautivos, and The Compensation Bureau

“A breath-taking, breath-making miracle of a book. Our times of forests on fire rage and yearn for such words that can bridge and ultimately abolish the divide between animal and human, fiction and reality, consciousness and the Universe, Apocalypse and promise, the End and perhaps a new beginning.”

Deena Metzger is a radical thinker on behalf of the natural world and planetary survival, a teacher of writing and healing practices for 50 years and a writer and activist profoundly concerned with peacemaking, restoration and sanctuary for a beleaguered world. She has written eight works of fiction, five poetry collections, several plays and works of non-fiction. Her books examine the tragic failure of contemporary culture and provide guidance for personal, political, environmental and spiritual healing. Her novel La Negra y Blanca won the 2012 Oakland Pen Award and her Warrior Poster photograph is celebrated around the world as a testament to a woman’s triumph over breast cancer. Deena has also been actively engaged in integrating Indigenous wisdom and medicine practices into contemporary culture through her projects ReVisioning Medicine, the Literature of Restoration, Daré and the 19 Ways Training for the 5th World. Deena lives at the end of the road in Topanga, California.

La Vieja: A Journal of Fire is now available from Book Clearing House, 800-431-1579 or visit their website or Bookshop.org or order through your favorite independent bookstore.

FICTION/LITERARY | Trade Paperback | Hand to Hand Publishing
ISBN: 9780998344362 | 6 x 9 | Pages: 282 | $19.95