When Thunders Spoke

by Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve

“This is a wonderfully powerful story, written with skill and beautifully illustrated.”—Publishers Weekly

Norman Two Bull is a modern and savvy fifteen-year-old Sioux who lives on a Dakota reservation with his parents. He is impatient with, if not faintly contemptuous of, the “old ways.” Encouraged by his grandfather, Norman makes a perilous climb to the top of a sacred butte, searching for agates where Indian boys had once gone for spirit visions. There, unexpectedly, he finds an ancient relic with the power to make strange and unusual things happen—and they do! When Thunders Spoke is a haunting story whose strength often lies in what is not said.

Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve spent her childhood on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation and still lives in South Dakota. She is the mother of three children. Among her much-admired books is The Chichi Hoohoo Bogeyman, also reprinted as a Bison Book. Illustrator Oren Lyons is a chief of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation and a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

— ©1993