AMERICAN SHAMAN Book One Excerpt

A man is the story he tells himself every day, from his first waking moment at dawn to the last soft, anxious dream at night.  Raven to Geser,

AMERICAN SHAMAN Book OneKey characters in AMERICAN SHAMAN Book One:

• Geser is the shaman apprentice who must complete the Three Trials; the Trial of the Mind, the Trial of the Body and the Trial of the Spirit; in order  to be a fully empowered shaman.  The closer he is brought to death by the three trials, the more powerful a shaman he will be...
• Icci is Geser's teacher or spirit guide.  He takes the form of an owl or a man.  Like any great teacher, his primary interest is in creating a shaman, not in whether Geser feels good about the process...
• Alma Mergen is the beautiful young junkie Geser saves at the beginning of the story.  But she may be much more than that -- there is something in her past, something she doesn't even know about, that makes this shaman stuff feel very familiar...

In order to pass the Third Trial, Geser must decide what he believes and why he believes it.  It is the trial we all must undergo if we are to be people of integrity.  But for a shaman, it is the difference between being able to help people and just being another guy walking the street.  Or being a victim of shaman sickness (a form of schizophrenia) or dead, if it turns out he does not have the strength of his convictions at the wrong moment, when confronted by a particularly potent spirit.

Excerpts from AMERICAN SHAMAN Book One