Written in resonant, poetic prose, The Woman Who Lives in the Earth takes place in a harsh, primitive land threatened by a severe drought. In this timeless place, young Sarah has become the target of the local villagers superstition because of her fascination with the mysteries of nature. Believing her to be the cause of the drought, they gather into an angry mob bent on destroying her. Pursued by their hatred, and aided only by her great-grandmother and a strange foxlike creature named Marishan Borison, Sarah uses the hidden forms and patterns of the natural world to transform herself as well as her enemies.

Touched by magic, The Woman Who Lives in the Earth is a haunting parable that speaks to the concerns of our time with simplicity and grace.

About the Author

Swain Wolfe is a writer and filmmaker who has lived in Montana most of his life. The Woman Who Lives in the Earth is his first novel.

His early films were made in Oakland, San Francisco, Seattle, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Montana. An interest in cultural anthropology resulted in the films Energy & Morality, about the effect of high energy use on social behavior, and Phantom Cowboy, about the ways groups and individuals heighten their sense of identity by using aggression to isolate themselves and their causes from the general public. His films have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and have twice represented the United States in the International Public Television Conference.

Recent projects have taken him to a Bedouin shanty town on the Gulf of Aqaba and to an island in Alaska to observe and film grizzly bears. The latter film, The Sacred Bear, will explore bear stories from early Eurasian and North American cultures, and compare our present views of nature with those of our early ancestors. One day in a meadow by the sea, he woke from a nap to find himself surrounded by five large grizzlies. He explained, The bears were eating Chocolate Lilies. They ignored me. But sometimes, when Im just waking up, I can still feel bears around me: large, serene, self-possessed bears.

For years Wolfe lived and worked around natural storytellers. The first were the cowboys he lived with as a boy on ranches in Colorado and Montana. As a young man he worked in the underground copper mines of Butte and Walkerville, and later as a logger in the Bitterroot Mountains. In an interview for the Bloomsbury Review he explained how these jobs affected the way he sees the world.

When youre underground for a while, you begin to get the feel of where the ore flows, how hard the granite is one place from another, how hot the wall temperature is from level to level, where the earth slips and messes up the tracks, and things you knew but never had words for. Then one day after work you drive over to Anaconda to see your girl and you realize something is very different. Your world is never going to be the same because you cannot be on the surface without thinking about whats underneath. And like water seeping through sand, that sensation invades everything, all your thoughts, your dreams. Youre never the same. The mines let you see in unconventional ways. At the same time, many of the miners knew how to tell stories better and with greater purpose than any Ive read.

After the mines, I worked in the woods. I became intensely aware of trees, which created another world for me and a very different way of seeing. Our early ancestors believed the world was alive and aware of us. I know how that feels and it affects how I write and how I tell stories.

His novel, The Woman Who Lives in the Earth, evolved over a period of years. The end of the story came from a dream I had as a child. The personalities of the people, even various animals, and, of course, all those experiences that show up in small, unconscious ways -- all these things became a vague sensation that surrounded my dream. Then one day it was a story. It was like seeing a face for the first time in the ancient plaster of your kitchen wall. We can look at something for years, and suddenly see it.

In recent years his interest as a filmmaker and writer have focused on the way different cultures and individuals use stories. He has just finished a childrens story about a lonely man who discovers what it is that hides in his shadow and why his past follows him wherever her goes. Wolfe is currently working on a love story about two people who attempt to create a life outside the norms and conventions of society.