Walking the Choctaw Road: Stories from the Heart and Memory of the People » (1ST)

Choctaw storyteller Tim Tingle makes his living telling stories and teaching folklore at schools, universities and festivals nationally. The Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers selected Tim as "Contemporary Storyteller of the Year" for 2001. Tim Tingle lives in Canyon Lake, Texas, near San Antonio.

Weaving traditional lore, oral histories and everyday life, Tim Tingle's stories teach us the Choctaw Way.

author of Tell Me a Tale - Joseph Bruchac

For a good many years now, Tim Tingle has been one of my favorite American storytellers. Invariably, his narratives honor the Choctaw traditions of his ancestors. Yet they are told with such poetic clarity that any good listener, whether Indian or not, will feel invited into that world, a place of memory and song, courage, magical reality, and the extraordinary lives of everyday folks. Delivered in Tim's quiet, down-home Indian voice, they're the sort of lesson stories that stick to you like a burr.

The good news for readers is that these written versions of Tim's tales lose none of the gentle intensity of his memorable oral tellings. Walking the Choctaw Road, like one of those old Choctaw chants that kept the people' s feet going along the long journey, will stay with you and lend you some of its strength. Cross the river with these stories-they'll give you safe passage.