{"product_id":"the-holy-road-isbn-9780593974551","title":"The Holy Road","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn unforgettable American story continues in the gripping sequel to the modern classic \u003ci\u003eDances With Wolves\u003c\/i\u003e—from the #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author Michael Blake.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEleven years have passed since Lieutenant John Dunbar became the Comanche warrior Dances With Wolves and married Stands With A Fist, a white-born woman raised as a Comanche from early childhood. With their three children, they live peacefully in the village of Ten Bears. But there is unease in the air, caused by increased reports of violent confrontations with white soldiers who want to drive the Comanche onto reservations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDisquiet turns to horror, and then to rage, when a band of white rangers descends on Ten Bear’s village, slaughtering half its inhabitants and abducting Stands With A Fist and her infant daughter. The three surviving great warriors—Wind In His Hair, Kicking Bird, and Dances With Wolves—decide they must go to war with the white invaders. At the same time, Dances With Wolves realizes that only he can rescue his wife and child.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTold with all the sweep, insight, and majesty that made \u003ci\u003eDances With Wolves\u003c\/i\u003e a worldwide phenomenon, \u003ci\u003eThe Holy Road\u003c\/i\u003e is an epic story of courage and honor.“Epic, tragic . . . Inhuman agony, brilliantly portrayed.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The young men were especially troubled. They had planned and dreamed and striven all their lives for opportunities to prove themselves, but the perplexing rush of events that culminated in the most recent council denied them the chance to live fully. If there were no buffalo, how could anyone hunt? Or feed a family? Or have a family? If there were no horses to steal, how could a man grow rich? How could a man win honors if there was no enemy to fight?”\u003cb\u003e—from \u003ci\u003eThe Holy Road\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eMichael Blake\u003c\/b\u003e was an award-winning screenwriter and the #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eDances with Wolves\u003c\/i\u003e. His other novels include \u003ci\u003eAirman Mortensen, Marching to Valhalla, The Holy Road,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eInto the Stars,\u003c\/i\u003e along with the nonfiction books \u003ci\u003eLike A Running Dog, Indian Yell, \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Twelve, The King\u003c\/i\u003e. Michael Blake died in 2015 and is survived by his wife and three children.\u003cb\u003eChapter I\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The scalp was red and thick but what made it especially extraordinary  was its great length. It was the longest shock of hair anyone had ever seen, so long  that its owner had to sit on the shoulders of another warrior to tie it to the rafters  of his lodge. Had it not been tied so high the hair would have dragged the ground  and people living in the lodge would have been forever brushing it aside, reducing  it from a vaunted trophy of war to an unwanted, everyday annoyance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Still, it fell  to a point about chest high and Wind In His Hair’s wives grumbled about its presence  from the moment it assumed a prominent place among the many other scalps hanging  in their large home. The grumbling was something the wives did under their breath  and out of earshot of their husband for they knew that to complain openly about such  a thing would cause unnecessary trouble. And it would be unfair to a husband who  had sired so many healthy children, had unfailingly provided an abundance for his  family, and was widely revered as the highest-ranking member of the elite warrior  society known to all as the Hard Shields, the combat unit that viewed protection  of the village and its people as their most sacred responsibility.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e They might challenge  their husband on the proximity of the family lodge to water, or the sleeping habits  of the children, or the preparation of a feast, but they kept their misgivings about  the white woman’s scalp to themselves. How their husband displayed his souvenir,  taken in honorable combat at the cost of his own disfigurement, was simply none of  their business.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Nor was it the business of anyone else in the village, and, like  the wives of Wind In His Hair, every member of the community kept his feelings about  the scalp hidden from public view. But the unvoiced opinions only added to a sense  of dread that had been growing steadily among them for years. The presence of the  white woman’s scalp in the village served as a constant reminder of the strange,  unfathomable threat that had come to dominate their lives. It was the worst kind  of threat a people can endure, an invisible horror that disturbs good sleep, confuses  clear thinking, and makes the steadiest heart skip with odd, little ripples of fear  at what tomorrow might bring.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Even Wind In His Hair was not immune. In the deepest  reaches of his instinctive, reactive soul, a soul as purely Comanche as any that  had ever been born, he could feel occasional and upsetting echoes. He had always  slept well, but in the last year he often woke inexplicably in the night. And sometimes  as he lay blinking in the dim light of his fire’s embers, his eyes would pick up  the outline of the long, red-haired scalp and he would wonder how many white people  he might have to kill to safeguard the only life he knew.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Having no answer grated  against his mind, and it was only when he had reassured himself that an answer was  not important, that his only responsibility in this life was to be a father, a husband,  and a warrior without fear, could he turn on his side and let sleep descend once  again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e CHAPTER II\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Ten bears, too, had trouble sleeping, a condition that had been  unknown to him for most of his long life. The anxiety that dogged all of his band  was a heavy burden for an old man already weighted down with increasing infirmity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He could no longer ride, and when camp was moved he was forced to travel like a  piece of baggage sprawled on a travois. Having outlived half a dozen wives, the last  of whom had died the spring before, he depended on his daughters to boil his meat  and tend his fire. The eyes that had served him through so many snows were as hazy  as twilight and he knew that they would never grow brighter, only darker. He tired  easily and would doze between daily interviews in which he arbitrated disputes, listened  to complaints, offered advice, or fielded questions about news from the wider world.  He talked less and less, preferring to meditate carefully on the words of others  before uttering brief, concise opinions packed with wisdom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As his sight diminished,  his hearing seemed to grow sharper, so sharp in fact that he began to hear the words  of others just as he heard the wind waving through the grass, or the percussive rhythms  of rainfall against the walls of his lodge. He had begun to listen to an eternal  communication beyond mere language that enabled him to hear into a person, to hear  the heart and lungs and blood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He had stumbled onto this wondrous gift of concentration  in an effort to stay awake during conversations. For a time he had fallen into a  pattern of losing consciousness in mid-discussion, a development that chagrined him  so greatly that he wished for death to spare him further embarrassment. But despite  his longing for release from the rigors of life, the old man was unable to throw  himself away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e If a generation ago he had wanted to make such an exit, he could have  done so by simply refusing to move on the breaking of camp. His lodge would have  been struck around him and he would have been left to sit like a shelled pea on the  ground, a cup of water and a bowl of food beside him. The sun would glare down upon  him, the wind would rush over his wrinkled flesh, and eventually he would recline  on his back, never to rise again, content with the thought that soon he would melt  back into the body of his mother the earth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Such a death seemed a luxury now. He  imagined it in the same way a boy dreams of winning honors in battle or a girl looks  forward to making a family of her own. But no matter how much he wished it to be,  Ten Bears could not take the hand death had extended. The present generation was  the most challenging he had ever known in his life as a Comanche. In any other era  his time would come and go and his own earthly presence would be replaced by another,  just as it had happened with the Comanches since they first appeared on the earth.  But now the great wheel of life seemed to be slowing and whether it would continue  to revolve or stop completely was impossible to know. The whole of Comanche life  was hanging in the balance, and so long as it did Ten Bears willed his tired lungs  to draw breath. If he were to begin his long journey across the stars today, he would  leave his people to be scattered like chaff in the coming whirlwind. So he stayed,  listening carefully to the blood of all those who came before him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When the sun  was starting down, one of his granddaughters, Hunting For Something, usually came  by with a small bowl of buffalo and berries which she herself had pounded into a  mush. If the day was fair, Ten Bears would wrap the food in a piece of cloth, grab  up his walking stick, and stand listening at the entrance of his lodge, waiting for  a lull in the rhythm of human traffic outside. At the appropriate moment Ten Bears  would bend his creaky frame and start into the sunlight, charting a course for the  open prairie and whatever scant stand of trees lay by a spring or pond or stream  close to camp.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e No one interrupted these sojourns. The entire community knew that  Ten Bears had somehow acquired the ability to “hear blood” and that for him to maintain  the gift it was necessary that he be free of distraction. When people saw him stride  stiffly out of camp they let him go, in the knowledge that surely he was sifting  weighty and mysterious thoughts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e No one could have guessed that Ten Bears’ primary  objective was to find a secluded spot where he could nap uninterrupted. But by the  time he reached his place of peace the idea of napping usually gave way to a sense  of wonder that his old legs had been able to carry him this far from camp yet again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e If he was lucky he would find a small grove of cottonwoods situated next to running  water. He would finger the medicine in the pouch hanging from his neck or perhaps  he would light his pipe as he sat listening to the breeze make music in the cottonwood’ s leaves, and to the eternal trickle of the stream. At times he would lie flat like  a corpse and gaze as best he could at the clouds overhead, opening his mind to anything  that wished to enter.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e That scalp at Wind In His Hair’s . . . no one likes it. I  don’t like it. But who is to blame? Not Wind In His Hair. Not the Comanches. The  Comanches didn’t fire first. The white woman had a gun that shoots twice. She shot  out Wind In His Hair’s eye. He took her scalp and brought it back and hung it in  his lodge. That’s his right. He’s a warrior.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Kicking Bird doesn’t like it. He doesn’ t go to Wind In His Hair’s home anymore. He wants peace. How can there be peace?  If I got up now . . . I won’t get up now, I’m happy on the ground. If I were on my  feet at this moment, if I looked in the four directions, perhaps I would see them.  No, I wouldn’t see them, not here. But they are out there somewhere. They are in  the east and the west, in the north and south. They are all around us. They are closer  every day.#1 New York Times bestselling author of Dances with Wolves","brand":"Ballantine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300566782181,"sku":"NP9780593974551","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593974551.jpg?v=1767739817","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-holy-road-isbn-9780593974551","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}