Ok so what would you say about the book, to someone who had not read it before? I mean what catches you about it?
I am standing in the sonora desert. It is noon. The sun, a silvery disk so brilliant as to be almost invisable, has come to a halt in the middle of the sky. There is not a single sound, not a movement around. The tall saguaros, with their prickly arms reaching toward that immobile sun, stand like sentries guarding the silence and the stillness.
The wind, as it has followed me through the dream, begins to blow with tremendous force. It whistles between the branches of the mesquite trees and shakes them with systematic fury. Red dust devils well up in the powdery swirls all around me. A flock of crows scatter like dots through the air then fall to the ground a bit farther away, softly, like bits of black veil.
As abruptly as it has begun, the wind dies down. I head towards the hills in the distance. It seems i walk for hours before I see a huge, dark shadow on the ground. I look up. I gigantic bird hangs in the air with outstretched wings, motionless, as though it were nailed to the sky. It is only when I gaze again at its dark shadow on the ground taht I know that the bird is moving. Slowly, imperceptibly, its shadow glides ahead of me.
Driven by some inexplicable urge, I try to catch up with the shadow. Regardless og how fast I run, the shadow moves farther and farther away from me. Dizzy with exhaustion, I stumble over my own feet and fall flat on the ground.
As I rise to dust off my clothes, I discover the bird perched on a nearby boulder. Its head is slightly turned toward me, as though beckoning me. Cautiously, I approach it. It is enormous and tawny, with feathers that glisten like burninshed copper. Its amber-colored eyes are hard and implacable and as final as death itself.
I step back as the bird opens its wide wings and takes off. It flies high up until it is only a dot in the sky. Yet its shadow on the ground is a straight dark line that stretches into infinity and holds together the desert and the sky.
Confident that if I summon the wind I will catch up woth the bird, I invoke an incantation. But there is no force, no power in my chant. My voice breaks into a thousand whipsers that are quickly absorbed by the silence. The desert regains its eerie calm. It begins to crumble at the edges, then slowly fades all around me...
