Interviews
People often ask me what is my favorite of all my books, and right now it's very easy to answer honestly -- it's my new one, The Godmother's Web. For one thing, writing this book gave me the opportunity to return to the Southwest, an area I've loved since working as a nurse at the Gallup Indian Medical Center 25 years ago and falling in love with Navajo and Pueblo cultures. It also gave me the opportunity to make some new friends in these cultures, people who assisted me with my research and also read and approved the copies of the manuscript I sent them before turning it over to my editor.
One of my fellow authors, in an anthology he edited about American Indian cultures, remarked that he was interested in the history rather than in the contemporary problems of American Indians today. In all of the Godmother books, I've tried to explore how the myths, folk tales, and supernatural beliefs of people (in the first book, Europeans in general, in the second, the Irish) are reflected in who they are and what problems they face today. This sounds very dry, I guess, and maybe it would be -- except that the books are about these magical ladies who go around and help folks solve those problems, especially ones with parallels in the old tales.
So not only did I get to spend three weeks roaming around the Navajo Nation, Hopi, and other areas in the Southwest, but I also had an opportunity to dig into the book research so I could ask intelligent questions once I got there. It was so much fun it was hard to believe I was getting paid to do it, but I also strongly felt an obligation to the people the book was about, and those who were helping me, to make it reflect that world with reasonable accuracy. So far I've received invitations to come back, and my fear that I might become the Salman Rushdie of the Southwest has not become reality.
—Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
