Sky fire

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Himmelsfeuer (original title Sacred Ground ) from 2001 is a novel by the American writer Barbara Wood . The translation into German was done by Veronika von Cordes and Susanne Dickerhof-Kranz and was first published in German by Krügerverlag in Frankfurt in 2001 ( ISBN 3-8105-2351-8 ). The story of the women of the Navarro family , which was one of the founders of Los Angeles, is told over a period of two thousand years .

content

  • La Primera Madre - the cave of the First Mother is a refuge into which the women named above retreat either from their tormentors, the men, from Spanish labor or in old age when death is approaching.
  • Marimi lived two thousand years ago and is that First Mother. Marimi is expelled from her tribe as a pregnant woman because she disregards a taboo and saves the life of the Indian boy Payat. Marimi moves to California with Payat and founds the Topaa tribe there. Almost all visionary women from Marimi's descendants over the centuries are called Marimi. Teresa, Angela and Marina have that special Indian name deep down inside them.
  • The novel can be read as the story of the Ranchera Angela Navarro (* 1776, † 1866).
    • 1775. Marimi, Topaa medicine woman, was converted by the Franciscan Felipe. To do this, she has to work in the nunnery during the day and is locked up at night. The Christians renamed her Teresa. Felipe quarrels with his god. Marimi-Teresa loves Felipe and leads him into that cave. In it they father Angela.
    • 1781. While the Padres are celebrating, Teresa escapes with her daughter Angela from the monastery into the cave. Teresa falls ill. When Angela wants to get help, she meets her father. Captain Lorenzo shoots the Franciscan and gives the five-year-old to his wife Doña Luisa. She had to bury her child on the march to the future village of LA and is relieved by this gift from heaven .
    • 1792. The Peninsulara (white born in Spain) Doña Luisa can't stand it in the LA desert. She wants to go back to her native Madrid with the sixteen-year-old foster daughter Angela without Lorenzo. The noble Spaniard Navarro throws the Doña through the bill. He marries Angela and Luisa has to stay in Alta California . Navarro humiliates Angela on her wedding night. During defloration, he uses the bride's long hair as a rein. Angela waits until Navarro, whom she has to address as my master in the marital bedroom , has fallen asleep, rides to the cave, cuts her hair and puts it there. For this act of resistance, she is beaten by her husband. During the following years of marriage, Angela was chastened on the spot at table in front of the children of Navarro for a wrong word.
    • 1830. Navarro forces his daughter Marina to marry rationally. Mother Angela stabs her tormentor in the back with the tailor's scissors and so Marina can escape into the cave. There she waits for her lover, a Yankee , whom she follows into the distance. Navarro survives Angela's attack and hides the shame from the neighbors. Angela turns the tables. Henceforth she rules over Navarro's Rancho Paloma. Navarro gives in. Angela makes it clear to him that if he rebels he will die at her hand.
    • 1866. Angela dies in the cave. Thirty grandchildren mourn. Angela survived Navarro, with whom she had nine children, for sixteen years.

Style and themes

In addition to Angela, the women Angelique and Erica are narrated in the novel .

  • Angelique (* 1824) is Angela's granddaughter. As a young widow she is looking for her father. The gold prospector Seth Hopkins redeems her for human trafficking so that she doesn't end up in a brothel in San Francisco. Seth hires the fine lady as a housekeeper in his smoky log cabin. The two marry, have children, get rich from gold discoveries and settle down as farmers near LA.
  • Erica is the heroine of the frame story that takes place today. The archaeologist Dr. Erica Tyler explores wall paintings in the cave mentioned above and falls in love with her opponent Jared Black. Jared is the head of the Indian Property Protection Commission. It turns out that Erica - the formerly almost convicted car thief, the former ward under official guardianship, the former inmate of an education camp of the California Education Authority - is rich and a descendant of the Marimis.

The recurring headaches of all heroines in the novel always arise shortly before their prophetic gaze, with which they foresee floods, epidemics, etc. The title of the German edition Himmelsfeuer , which does not appear once in the text of the novel, possibly refers to the neuropathic flashes in the minds of visionary medicine women.

expenditure

  • Barbara Wood: sky fire. Novel. Fischer Taschenbücher 16571 (2nd edition, August 2005). 496 pages, ISBN 978-3-596-16571-1
  • Barbara Wood: sky fire. Novel. Translated from the English by Veronika v. Cordes and Susanne Dickerhof-Kranz. Ueberreuter large print (January 2007). 704 pages, ISBN 978-3-8000-9243-7