"The Way to Rainbow Mountain is a moving collection of poems that span the Americas, from Newfoundland to Patagonia. The main theme is recovery. A Native American woman living in the northern Catskills is diagnosed with breast cancer. Thankfully (if that word can even be used in the case of cancer) the tumor is removed with a lumpectomy followed by radiation treatments. Less than three months later, her lover takes her on a couple of journeys, travels that written about compete with the best road-trip works in literature. Her amante is her caretaker, guide, and best friend. They converse with Peruvian, Chilean, and Bolivian natives. They exchange thoughts with llamas and guanacos. He changes flat tires on red-sand roads. All during the trips, she is passing through clouds of depression, ruminating in poetic monologues while escaping the pain and hollowness left by the extracted lump back in the Catskills: "Is this light the Milky Way's star road/watched over by llama eyes, this flashing/out of my skin not my usual fleeting rapture/when solstice flares in?" When they arrive at the base of the hill facing Rainbow Mountain, at an altitude of 17,000 feet, her lover has to practically carry her up, because the air is too thin for her to breathe. The beauteous peak becomes her colors in the rain." - Stephen Page, author of A Ranch Bordering the Salty River. "Possessing a courageousness with which few artists are gifted or gutsy enough to create, Susan Deer Cloud's poetry roars with raw truths and a kind of audacious intimacy. Her words pierce deep and penetrate the perfect central point where our internal and external landscapes fuse -a sacred place where the oneness of the universe can be felt. From the pristine mountains of Deer Cloud's beloved ancestral Catskill home to the salt-aired shores of Nova Scotia, whether in the bowels of New York City's subway system or on the precarious path of breast cancer, inside the dreams of a medicine dreamer and inside the realities of a pragmatic realist - The Way to Rainbow Mountain is the many physical and spiritual journeys of a bold and beautiful life well-spent." - Gabriel Horn, author Spirit Drumming and Amy Krout-Horn, author Dancing in Concrete Moccasins.
