Turtle Lung Woman's Granddaughter

Told in their own words, Turtle Lung Woman’s Granddaughter is the unforgettable story of several generations of Lakota women who grew up on the open plains of northern Nebraska and southern South Dakota. Delphine Red Shirt has delicately woven the life stories of her mother, Lone Woman, and Red Shirt’s great-grandmother, Turtle Lung Woman, into a continuous narrative that succeeds triumphantly as a moving, epic saga of Lakota women from traditional times in the mid–nineteenth century to the present. Especially revealing are Turtle Lung Woman’s relationship with her husband, Paints His Face with Clay, her healing practice as a medicine woman, Lone Woman’s hardships and celebrations growing up in the early twentieth century, and many wonderful details of their domestic lives before and during the early reservation years.

"Part family history, part myth, it is made especially revealing by the lively, fantastic stories of Red ShirtÍs mother, Lone Woman. . . . These legends and histories, related in spare but eloquent language, are fascinating throughout."—The Washington Post, “Red Shirt does not lecture; rather, her vivid, simple prose turns the reader into a witness. ‘I was there and I remember,’ she writes, and readers will feel that way, too.”—Publishers Weekly, "A colorful, emotional journey. . . . It is the intimacy and sacredness of the way these individualized stories have been preserved and retold that gives this story an uncommonly poignant spiritual glimpse into the historical perspective of these Lakota women."—Kaia Hemming, Voices from the Gap

Delphine Red Shirt is a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and is an adjunct professor of American studies and English at Yale University. She is the author of Bead on an Anthill: A Lakota Childhood (Nebraska 1997).