ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This novel brings out very clearly and skillfully two problems or issues experienced by many children and by the young and naïve. These two subjects are:
1. Motherless Daughters and 2. The Bi-Ethnic Child
The author has studied several areas of mysticism, beginning with Yoga classes with Marcia Moore in Lexington in 1969. Later she practiced Psycho-Motor Therapy with Al Pesso. She also took an inspiring 4-day course in Silva Mind Concepts [formerly Silva Mind Control] with Jerry Seavey. Her search included studies in Rosicrucianism -- above the 12th Degree, and has a group study in her home on Edgar Cayce, a prophet, and has been a member of A.R.E., the Association for Research & Enlightenment, recording Cayce's readings.
Bradford has chanted at Yogi Muktananda's group in Brookline. She is familiar also with the writings of the Indian yogi, Yogananda, in California, whose body, similar to that of Saint Teresa of Avila, has been preserved fresh as ever. Bradford has been initiated into studies in Reiki: Shigun, about healing self and others.
She has a group studying "The Seven Sacred Flames" through publications from Mt. Shasta, California, and receives email newsletters from John Perkins, an author who has studied mystical aspects of indigenous cultures in many countries. She full believes in Karma and Reincarnation and has had some Past Life Regressions.
This author, as a protest writer over many decades, has written and has had published many Letters to the Editors, newspaper articles, also magazine articles about her strong defense of the Arabs in Many Middle East countries, especially focusing on the Gaza Strip. She decries the prominent and negative publicity given these ethnic groups in the press, on television, the Internet and in books, and could change this reality if she could.
In this novel, she portrays fully the cruelty of one family who mirrored old-fashioned rigidity, exhibiting similar traits and passions seen and practiced during and well after the days of the Ottoman Empire: the harshness, extreme dislike and insensitivity, at which time the Family was born and lived in Syria, then called Turkey, while Syria was ruled and schooled by the Turks. The author utilizes these writings to reveal the grief and anguish of one Kathleen Saliba.
