Author Description

While living on her native Navajo reservation, Katie Reynolds develops an interest in veterinary medicine when she helps Dr. Colgrave an extension veterinarian find the connection between animals on the reservation and the death of tribal members. Katie enters school intending to return to Dinétah, the Navajo homeland to serve her people after graduation, but her heart gets in her way, and she finds herself in a quandary when she falls in love with Rory, a white fellow entirely unaccustomed to her way of life. Although leaving her world for college and veterinary school is scary Katie finds support and guidance into the bilagáana's, the white man's world from Ellen, Dr. Colgrave's wife. Excelling in her undergraduate studies, Katie accepts a place into the elite and prestigious University of California veterinary college at Davis. When they meet in veterinary school Rory is instantly enamored while Katie is the opposite. But veterinary school takes four years, and the small class of veterinarians gets close during their tenure. It is during veterinary school Katie's love quandary unfolds. That's when she develops feelings for Rory Evans, a bilagáana not of her culture. Given Katie's segregated upbringing this was entirely unexpected, with common sense tugging her back while conditions of the heart propel her the other way. Katie eventually gives in to Rory's persistence as slowly, but surely he becomes her man. There are severe disruptions as they grow together, but that's what makes life complicated and books interesting. As her love for this bilagáana called Rory develops, Katie must seek guidance through her Navajo traditions, her mother, Rose, and ultimately from Rory himself. Rory needs to grow too, but unlike Katie he is hesitant to look to friends for guidance, still seeking those with more knowledge than a contemporary would possess. Although this emotional railroad engine came as a surprise to Katie, her mother initiated the first foray by marrying a bilagá