Torn between his loyalty to his family, his faith in God, and his terror of this vicious disease, Jacob Hansen struggles to preserve his sanity amid the chaos and violence around him.

    31 stories:In a strange land --Rain --The Fall of Edward Bernard --The Pool --Mackintosh --The Happy couple --Unconquered --Before the party --Yellow streak --Vessel of wrath --Force of circumstances --Alien corn --Virtue --Bum --Treasure --The Colonel's lady --The Human Element --Footprints in the jungle --Book-bag --The Back of beyond --Mayhew --Mirage --The Letter --The Outstation --Red --Miss King --The Hairless Mexican --Giulia Lazzari --The Traitor --His Excellency --Sanatorium --

    One should not be surprised, I suppose, that it has remained vital, and immediate, for that is the nature of story. And this is particularly true of the oral tradition, which exists in a dimension of timelessness. I was first told these stories by my father when I was a child. I do not know how long they had existed before I heard them. They seem to proceed from a place of origin as old as the earth."The stories in The Way to Rainy Mountain are told in three voices. The first voice is the voice of my father, the ancestral voice, and the voice of the Kiowa oral tradition. The second is the voice of historical commentary. And the third is that of personal reminiscence, my own voice. There is a turning and returning of myth, history, and memoir throughout, a narrative wheel that is as sacred as language itself." —From the new Preface