The people who come are scattered all over this new world. Some are in places similar to their homelands. The Lenape (the Delaware) are in wooded grasslands where they can grow corn and hunt animals that they know about. Others like the Pee Dee appear in a pristine version of their home state of South Carolina. However, there are others who turn up in places they did not know like a few Sioux who appear at the Lenape site.

The book takes the reader through the first winter the people experience. They scramble to prepare for life outdoors in the cold by building shelters, tanning hides, and drying meat. Since they came in the fall, they have no real crops to put by except what they could gather. The people are using skills they had learned from elders as children but never have had to rely on for their very survival. They are helped by Keepers, spiritual beings who take on attributes of a totem animal and a human being. Soon, many of the people are finding they have spiritual gifts they did not know they had.

Into this world, however, come the same conflicts that have plagued the Above World, the world these people came from. There is jealousy, revenge, hatred, and murder. How the people deal with these conflicts is the basis of this book and revolves on the hope that the people in the Old World can be different.

I enjoyed seeing how the people lived and how their culture dealt with marriage and other life events. But I was most struck by how George was creating new myths. The people who came to the Old World did so by believing many creation stories and by having interactions with Keepers in visions. Now, the people were interacting with Keepers almost on a daily basis and their own exploits would soon be the stuff of legend and spiritual storytelling.

As this book ends, I didn’t want to leave the people of the Old World. We all can benefit from spiritual storytelling such as this. I’m hoping that there will be a book three to come. Bravo!