Here, as the changes that brought civil war to the United States gather and then break, a savage transformation challenges our dreams of possibilities on this new continent, transplanting the sensory world we evolved with as agricultural humans.
Pitched battles for the soul of the future are underway, echoing the bloody battle between North and South:
✥ Will the women of European bloodlines win the respect and equity their Native American sisters enjoy in their matrilineal culture?
✥ Will the craft village be able to hold out against the onslaught of the Lowell model, the factory’s assault on the fabric of community?
In Linen Shroud Destiny Kinal beautifully illuminates how our ancestors approached conundrums similar to the ones we are facing in our time now, with vibrantly alive characters expressing both Native and European values. How does flax—a tough and finicky plant fiber with a willowy blue flower—transform into the luminous satiny textile that lasts for generations, growing more soft and supple with time? The formative struggles that Linen Shroud draws on suggest that the conflicts our ancestors succumbed to or mastered in the nineteenth century have shaped us to find solutions today to the insoluble.
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