New Book Release: Talking White Owl - by Valerie Hagenbush

 

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When fifteen-year-old Viktor Talking White Owl wins a prestigious academic scholarship from Ohio State University, it draws the attention of an alliance of multi-tribal leaders known as the Council of First Nations. The young Lakota student, born on a poor South Dakota reservation, has the potential for influencing a new generation of Native activists. Viktor's achievements have not gone unnoticed by another group. Quietly observing the boy along with the Council's activities from their home deep beneath the sacred Black Hills is a tribe long believed to have disbanded, the Rawakota. For decades they have been sending scouts around the globe to infiltrate top-secret boardrooms and government agencies. Their mission: to secretly help the Council of First Nations eventually achieve its overarching goal of reclaiming tribal lands lost to broken treaties, a lofty enterprise they anticipate will not go unchallenged. Rawakota scientists have subsequently built a formidable defense capable of technologically blindsiding any superpower. For now, Viktor is important to them because he is the son of one of their best operatives, U.S. Air Force pilot Constance Howling Wind. And although Viktor's roots are Rawakota, the fact seems immaterial to him in today's world until he receives a cryptic vision. The same Rawakota influences that have inadvertently shaped his life thus far will ultimately alter the American landscape.

About the author: Valerie Hagenbush explored various fields before pursuing writing. She studied filmmaking at Ohio State University and later veterinary technology at the University of Cincinnati. After raising two daughters in Ohio and Illinois, she relocated to Arizona, where she taught before retiring and writing Talking White Owl. Her first novel, Good-bye and Good Riddance (2005), was inspired by her 1970s hitchhiking experiences. Talking White Owl, however, took a different path. Though she had never met Lakota people, the story remained in her imagination for years. While working on another book, Viktor Talking White Owl, a Lakota boy, suddenly emerged, recounting his story to her, leading to the novel’s creation.