Zipacana’s Legacy Fifth Dimension Books, cover and Interior design by Rick Palmacci, copyright and written by Cindy Davis.
Jade French, a highly successful marketing specialist soon to be promoted to the top position in her California-based company, has received notice that she has inherited a ‘hotel’ in a small town in Mexico. Because she somehow feels that this is where her future lies, she resigns, permanently breaks off with her boyfriend and leaves with close friend Mari Anderson (a totally high maintenance city girl) to move to take possession of the property. They arrive and find the well-designed structure fronted by a large porch heavily overgrown with tangled vines, and other obvious signs of neglect as it has been empty since grandfather’s death. From this point on, the reader embarks upon an intriguing journey where Jade discovers that her birth name was not Jade French, but Jade Sacniete Waempo IX, that her grandfather had been a practitioner and teacher of a form of Shamanism, that her inheritance resulted from her grandfather’s recognition that she was a person with already developed, but unrecognized, understanding of many Shaman powers and that she had arrived to fulfil a predestined position as a prominent leader. The story is a fascinating unfolding of the manner in which Jade gradually learns of her legacy, the trials encountered as her new life gradually opens, her acquisition of new friends as well as inexplicable enemies and ultimate understanding of formerly unanswerable questions relevant to her mother and father.
Discussion/Summary: The author opens with an Author’s note telling the reader that “the spiritual situations that happen to Jade in the story are things that can happen to anyone, Telepathy and self-healing are not fantasies. They are available inside each of us.” She also explains that shamanism has existed for thousands of years and that ancient times the local Shaman was the physician, psychologist and Spiritual Healer to his community. Purportedly shaman are “connected to earth. They are healers of the earth and the human body; intermediaries between our world and the spirit world.” Further, this former 23-year editor and mystery writer, now has been “awakened” and with her “also reformed husband” Rick Palmacci, present “talks on positivity and spirituality” as well as providing “a bi-monthly blog and short stories featuring characters from the Jade series.” She also has provided a well-selected Bibliography of some publications pertinent to the basic subject of the mind/body/spirit and shamanism, Native American Religions of Central and South America and similar thought patterns. In Summary, a truly intriguing story providing captivating features of a subject rarely encountered when perusing reading choices.
5* Highly recommended read for all.