The author sets the story on a Pueblo Indian Reservation very much like the one on which she was raised so her intimate knowledge of the landscape and the scenery make for spare but poignant descriptions. The pictures he author paints with imagery are almost as real as if she had provided a painting of the big cottonwood tree and the Blue Mountains still in snow.

There is a calm resolve in the writing style which shadows the stoic grace of the people who accept death as an important part of life. The characters are not overwrought or hysterical at Teofilo's death but merely tend to the old man's body with love and with traditions that will see his spirit into the next life.

The Indian culture believes that it is important to provide the dead body with corn and water for the spirit's nourishment...