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Desert pilgrim
English's Mary Swander journeys to physical recovery, spiritual
awareness in latest book.
In her latest book, Mary Swander, distinguished professor of English, chronicles
her miraculous physical recovery and an astonishing restoration of faith
in the modern world.
But the journey of The Desert Pilgrim to print is also a long and
winding road.
Swander's non-fiction book weaves together history, herbal medicine, physical
healing, and "what it means - in this modern age - to believe."
The book, which will be published by Viking Press, was originally near the
final stages when the publishing house’s headquarters near the World
Trade Center were disrupted by the events of Sept. 11.
"Viking Press is less than a mile from the World Trade Center site,"
Swander said. "The attacks messed up the whole publishing company for
six months."
Originally scheduled to be published in the spring of 2002, The Desert
Pilgrim was again set back due to editorial delays. Now the book will
hit the bookstores in August 2003.
"Everything that could go wrong with getting the book out did,"
Swander said.
While the publishing company was on hold, Swander decided to take another
look at The Desert Pilgrim.
"I did even more revisions, wrote a couple of new chapters. It was
a never-ending odyssey," she said. "But revisions are a good thing.
It makes for a better book."
The delay also allowed Swander to add a different element to a non-fiction
writing course she taught during the fall semester at Iowa State. As she
was working on various aspects of The Desert Pilgrim with Viking
Press, she made those a part of the course.
As a result, the students saw first hand how the cover was selected, how
book jacket copy was written and bound galleys of the book.
The journey of The Desert Pilgrim actually began for Swander after
a car accident had left her paralyzed and in chronic pain with no medical
care in sight.
"I was a lapsed Catholic content with the solitude and tenuous spirituality
of a life tied to the Iowa prairie and its seasons," Swander writes.
"(The car accident) forced (me) to look inside for strength and for
meaning."
Her doctors suggested that she leave Iowa and go to a warmer climate. Soon
afterwards Swander became a visiting professor of English at the University
of New Mexico. Once there she encountered a variety of non-traditional medical
practitioners.
One of those was Father Sergei, a Russian Orthodox monk whose barrio church
is hidden away on Route 66 amidst crack dealers and the homeless.
"He became my spiritual advisor," Swander said. "He pulled
me through that horrible time in my life."
Swander says that her spinal cord injury hasn't been cured, but she is now
walking without a cane through the "spiritual and emotional healing"
supplied by Father Sergei.
She also credits a curandera, Lu, an herbal healer.
"Here was a women healing (people) with herbs," Swander said.
Swander describes Lu's drug store lined with boxes of herbs that the owner
grew and harvested herself near the Rio Grande River. Swander accompanied
Lu on trips to harvest herbs and she drank concoctions made by Lu.
"Together these two led me to confront my growing distrust of medical
and spiritual authority," Swander writes.
After returning from New Mexico, Swander "read everything I could get
my hands on" about Hispanic traditions, healing, herbalism, and the
history of medicine as she researched The Desert Pilgrim for two
years.
"I knew when I was down there (New Mexico) I was on something really
important," Swander said.
The Desert Pilgrim is just the latest in a series of books Swander
has authored with major publishing houses. She has won seven major national
awards and her poems, essays, articles and scholarly papers have frequently
appeared in the preeminent national venues.
Around LAS
March 10-23, 2003
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