Ishi's Journey from the Center to the Edge of the World

This is a wise and wonderful book. The descriptions are lovingly precise, and the whole novel is a moving elegy for Ishi, the last wild Indian in North America, and of his vanished people. If this book doesn't sometimes make you smile and also move you to tears, then you are in need of a heart transplant." Frank Wilson, Books Editor, The "Philadelphia Inquirer" newspaper, AP

This is an amazing book, a modern Adam and Eve story where the last survivor of a northern California Indian tribe must struggle with incest taboos even though he knows that he and his woman-cousin are the last hope for his people's survival. Ishi's point-of-view is vividly realized, both in his wilderness homeland and after he joins the wilds of civilization of 1914 San Francisco. This novel is a dramatic realization of the real story of Ishi, one told through the inventiveness of fiction. It's a book of unspeakable sadness and mystical euphoria, a story almost too true to life and almost too incredible to have its basic in the real tale of Ishi, the last wild Yahi Indian.