This novel, based on a true story, is one woman's journey out of the strictures of cultural mores and societal values of what is sane, judicious, and appropriate and into the world of the primal intelligences that churn within all of us. A girl is found in a tree, alone, seemingly frightened and unwilling to communicate with anyone. And yet she displays a certain intelligence that beckons to the woman, intrigues her with its innate and often hidden language. The woman finds herself drawn into a world of beauty and fear, intensity and passion, that eventually brings her to a new awareness of what is missing in the left-brain intelligence that so dominates our assumptions of reality. This brilliant work will bring you to the edge of what you know to be true, challenging the very tenets of your existence and opening the door to what is missing in all our lives: the awakened animal consciousness whose wild intelligence renews our passion for life, for nature, and completes our sensibilities so that we can live as equals in the web of all life as human animals, alive to the very core of our being.

La Negra y Blanca is the crowning achievement of Deena Metzger's lifetime as a novelist, poet, and playwright. On the surface, it is a meditation on memory as the narrator pieces together the bright flashes of images of her life recalled, piecing them together with the intention of creating a healing matrix that reflects a life lived in search of meaning. On a deeper level, it weaves in the history and tragedy of the Conquest's ongoing political and environmental effects on Latin America through the narrator s relationship with Victor Perera, a Guatemalan-American writer and journalist who documented the destruction of the native Lacandon tribe of Guatemala by imperialistic forces. We become acquainted with La Negra, a mysterious woman who is pregnant, but who will not give birth to her child until the world is safe enough for its continued existence, and who is the centerpiece character of a natural world struggling to survive and maintain its integrity in the midst of industrialization and the decimation of the sacred forests. Metzger has created a complex novel that weaves the personal, political, global and spiritual threads of her life into a tapestry of beauty, sorrow, transcendence, and ultimately, the assurance of a world renewed by the unwavering examination of all of its component parts to create a path into a future that promises reverence for all life.