These stories were selected by Gerald Hausman over a thirty-year stretch of listening and telling Navajo folktales around the country. Some of these were first aired on Navajo radio station KTNN and received tribal approval in 1988. Gerald’s published in-print version of the turquoise horse legend has reached more than a half-million readers and listeners as part of The Junior Great Books Foundation program for learning. All of the stories contained here are little flashes of insight into the human mind as well as native thinking. The sound effects are by jazz musician Ray Griffin who also collected the ambient sounds that enhance the music and lend a naturalistic flavor to the storytelling.

Here collected, the stories, poems, chants and prayers that Gerald Hausman learned from his American Indian friends during the 1960s and through the 1990s when he completed his translations of these great creation tales, equal in power to the stories in Genesis. The musical compositions by Ray Griffin, a veteran of the "Santa Fe scene", are unique in that they merge sound effects, bird songs, spadefoot toads, and noises of the desert at night while Gerald Hausman is telling stories. The result is a "Navajo night" full of healing and happiness, and mystery.

About the Author/Reader

Gerald Hausman, born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1945, grew up in New Jersey and Massachusetts. He graduated from college in New Mexico and continued to live there for two decades. During that time, he had a summer residence on the island of Jamaica where he and his wife, Loretta, founded a school for creative writing. Mr. Hausman has lived in Bokeelia, Florida since 1994. In addition to his many books about Native America, Gerald Hausman has written extensively about animal mythology. His work as a folklorist has earned him many national and international honors. Gerald's most recent award is from the Florida Magazine Association for his column "Pine Island Soundings" about life on a barrier island.

Gerald is a frequent storyteller at college writers programs and at young authors conferences. Recently, he performed at the Young Authors Conference in Kaiserslautern, Germany as a guest of Department of Defense Dependent Schools. His lively presentations, complete with a myriad of sound effects, have earned him praise from storytellers, speakers, writers, and listeners.

Praise for Gerald Hausman

“I have known Gerry since our early days in college and I have seen him mature into a prolific writer on American Indian literature. I feel he has once again caught the spirit of his quest.”
—Ray Brown, Navajo translator and advisor on The Turquoise Horse

“Hey, Coyote Man, give me a holler!”
—Jay DeGroat, Navajo artist

“Navajo myths are among the most poetic in the world, full of dazzling word imagery. Hausman’s meditations are likewise sheer poetry, traveling on sunbeams.”
—Richard Erdoes, co-editor American Indian Myths and Legends