The tale of a Native elder, by her adoptive daughter.

Abandoned by her mother when she was three years old, Mary Elizabeth Thunder survived abuse, a broken marriage, and a heart attack to become one of the most highly esteemed leaders in the Native American movement -- healer, visionary, teacher, and chosen successor in a native tradition. Her story is also the true tale of a remarkable elder, Grandma Grace Spotted Eagle, who adopted her and guided her to spiritual awakening as a messenger. At once harrowing and uplifting, this memoir takes us from her early life and experiences with the legendary elders Chief Leonard Crow Dog, Wallace Black Elk, and Rolling Thunder, through a near-death experience that utterly transformed her, to nine remarkable years spent traveling America by van, culminating in her inclusion in the Sun Dance, one of the world's oldest and most venerable initiation ceremonies. Intimate, painfully honest, essentially and overwhelmingly spiritual, this is a book about a woman's quest for meaning amid two cultures and a compelling account of the visionary underpinnings of Native American life.