In the Shadow of Sunrise ARC now available!

 

In the Shadow of Sunrise, my middle grade novel set in the American Southwest 10,000 years ago, will be coming out on April 8, 2025. 

I'd love it if it opened to great reviews! That's what ARCs - Advanced Reader Copies - are all about.

If you'd like to read this book before it comes out, click here.

In the Shadow of Sunrise tells the story of Earth Shadow, a bow who was born the smaller and weaker of twin brothers. Earth Shadow is anxious to step out of the shadow of Sunrise, his physically stronger twin brother. The two are now old enough to join their clan’ s adults on the annual Walk Around, a summer-long journey to gather stones for implements and connect with other clans. He worries that if he doesn’ t participate in the hunt that will take place at the Great Gathering of all the clans, this Walk Around will be his last, and he will spend the rest of his summers staying behind with the sick, elderly, and very young. As he listens to Grandmother's stories of the ancestors, Earth Shadow discovers that his creativity and reasoning may be as important to the survival and success of the clan as his brother's hunting skills.

This is a coming of age story set in a very different time, yet young boys then feel much the same way as young boys now about the future and their place within it. 

The places visited during the Walk Around are all places where archaeologists have found evidence of Folsom occupation. Located in what is now Southern Colorado, Northwestern Texas, and New Mexico, many of the sites are open to the public now. 

This book would be an excellent social studies/literature tie in for grades 4-9. A teacher's guide and powerpoint presentation are available through the author. 

Real People in ​REBELS ALONG THE RIO GRANDE

Although the main characters in Rebels Along the Rio Grande are fictitious characters, almost all of the background characters are real, historical people. Here are a few of the most famous: 

Illustration by Ian Bristow from Where Duty Calls

Christopher "Kit" Carson (December 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868) is perhaps the most famous Indian Scout, mountain man, and frontiersman of all time. Carson left his home in rural Missouri when he was only 16 to become a mountain man and trapper in the rugged Rocky Mountains. By the time of the Civil War, he had added wilderness guide, Indian agent, and U.S. Army officer to his resume. Carson was a legend in his own lifetime, and his exploits, although greatly exaggerated, appeared in dime novels.Carson was a quiet man, short in stature, and uncomfortable with his own celebrity In Where Duty Calls, he is mending his own clothes when he meets Raul for the first time at Fort Craig. Carson was then leading a division of New Mexico Volunteers. 

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Edward R.S.Canby (November 9, 1817 – April 11, 1873) was a West Point graduate who was in command of New Mexico territory's Fort Defiance when the Civil War broke out. He was appointed colonel of the 19th Infantry on May 14, 1861 and made commander of the Department of New Mexico after the man who had been commander left to join the Confederacy.
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More an administrator than a fighter, Canby was a cautious and careful leader. He realized that defending the entire territory from every possible attack would stretch his forces too thinly, so he amassed his troops at Fort Craig, to guard the route up the Rio Grande. He was defeated at the Battle of Valverde, but managed to retain the fort and keep its precious stores of food and arms out of enemy hands. Eventually, this forced the Confederates to abandon their campaign and return to Texas.

Canby made no secret of his distain for the New Mexico Volunteers. His reports blamed them for more cowardice and incompetence than they deserved.

​Canby was killed in 1873 while attending peace talks with the Modoc in the Pacific Northwest. He was the only United States general to be killed during the Indian Wars.

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Illustration by Ian Bristow in The Famished Country 

Henry Hopkins Sibley (May 25, 1816 – August 23, 1886) was also a West Point graduate who was serving in New Mexico territory at the outbreak of the Civil War. He resigned his commission on May 13, 1861, the day of his promotion to major in the 1st Dragoons and joined the Confederate Army. Sibley convinced Confederate President Jefferson Davis to put him in command of a brigade of volunteer cavalry in West Texas, which he named the Army of New Mexico. Sibley's intention for the New Mexico Campaign was to capture Fort Union on the Santa Fe Trail and make it a forward base of supply. He would then capture the gold and silver mines of Colorado and the warm-water ports of California. Sibley was accused of alcoholism during his time in New Mexico. Before the war ended, he had been court martialed and censured. After the war, he served as an advisor for the Egyptian Army, but continued to struggle with alcoholism. He died in poverty.

Doomed World - Again

 If you read the papers or listen to the news, it becomes clear that the world is doomed. We are destroying our air. The seas are rising. The ice caps are melting. We are doomed. 

This isn't the first time we've teetered on the edge of total destruction. There's a reason our folklore, our myths, and our movies are filled with apocalyptical stories. 

In Atlas of a Lost World, writer Craig Childs tells of another time the world as we knew it was ending. It happened a long time ago. Before we could shoot a movie about it, or write a book.. There aren't even clay tablets telling about how the world was changing in catastrophic ways. The records are written, not by man, but by nature, in the rocks that geologists and anthropologists study.

The time I'm talking about was at the end of the last Ice Age. Like today, temperatures were rising. Ice caps were melting. Places that had been habitable, like the Doggerland, north of Britain, half of Florida, and the Beringia, the 500 mile land bridge that linked Alaska to Siberia, were sinking under the rising seas. And that wasn't the worst of it. 

About 13,000 years ago, a glacier dam in Montana broke. The deluge it released took out half of Washington State, and some of Oregon and Idaho. Everything but the highest buttes and mountains were flooded and large portions of the landscape were washed away. Points and projectiles buried in the piles of debris left from this debacle indicate that people might have been there to watch the devastation. Those who survived would have been standing on tall buttes as the water thundered by. They might have felt like Noah standing on the bridge of the ark - like the entire world was being erased by water. After it was over, they would have climbed down into a world of mud and chaos to begin their lives anew.

At about the same time, volcanos in central Mexico were going through a series of eruptions. They filled the air with smoke and cinders, darkening the sky and making breathing difficult. Scientists have found mammoth bones entombed in the igneous ash, the flesh cooked away in the intense heat.. They've also found human artifacts that show that people were there to witness this hellish environment.

Although not all scientists agree, a comet might have exploded high up in the atmosphere over North America at about the same time. No impact site has been found, but archaeologists and geologists have detected a layer of soil that dates from about this period containing pellets of silica that might be the remnants of this explosion. The sonic boom as this explosion produced must have sounded like the trumpet to end all time, the rain of molten silica terrifying and, for some, deadly.

The worst catastrophe of the time might actually have been recorded. A carved stone pillar in Gobekli, Turkey seems to record the core collapse of a super nova. about 12,830 years before the present. Such an event would have pelted the earth with doses of UV that would have been deadly to marine life and plants. The sudden brightening, then disappearance of a star would have been disturbing, even if the consequences were not understood by the ancient peoples who witnessed and recorded the event.   

Add these events to the thousands of years of epic flooding and rise of sea level brought on by the end of the Ice Age, and it is clear that those who lived at this time might have thought that their world was ending. For the megafauna who lived then - the mammoths and giant ground sloth to name a few, it really was the end.

Book Review: Miya's Mountain

Fifteen-year-old Miya Skippingbird knows that she's let the family down. Her impulsiveness and lack of attention to detail has frustrated her father so much that he no longer trusts her to do what she's promised. She convinces him to give her one last chance, and he agrees to let her lead a cocky city slicker and his son on a trail ride and fishing expedition into the mountains. If she's successful, she'll prove that she can be trusted, and she's help relieve the burden on her financially strapped parents. 

But once the party is in the mountains, a massive rockslide traps them and one of the party becomes seriously ill. Miya is the only one who can cross the treacherous summit and go for help, but she must overcome her all-consuming anxiety and her paralyzing fear of heights to do so, and even her best friend, Jake Runningdeer can't help her. 

When things are at their worst, she does get help -- from a grizzly bear! No, this isn't fantasy. What happens is very believable, but you'll have to read it to understand. 

 This middle grade adventure novel is perfectly paced and kept me turning pages long after I was supposed to set the book aside. I really felt for the characters and wanted to know how things would turn out.

 

About the author 

 Cathy Ringler is a storyteller, cowgirl, and retired teacher. She lives at the foot of the beautiful Beartooth Mountains and rides in them as often as her busy schedule will allow. Her experience in the saddle and around horses really shines through in Miya's Mountain. Her details about saddling and watching the body language of horses will ring true to anyone who's been around horses.

There are discussion questions in the back of the book which make this a perfect read aloud for 4th-7th grade classes, and would make a great choice for book clubs in elementary and middle schools.