Singing into Bone

Reading Singing into Bone is like walking a labyrinth. The tales Rebecca Singer weaves together are not linear; they spiral and turn, they take us to the edge of the unknown, then circle back home, deeper than before. Like the windings of the labyrinth, the stories have a heartbeat, a pulse.

There are four sections in the book, just as there are four directions and four gates in a Medicine Wheel. The book opens with a powerful prayer. The stories reveal answers that have come to Rebecca throughout her courageous, compassionate and adventurous life.

Rebecca Singer is a vivid and generous writer, inviting us with her into the home of her beloved first teacher, Patricia, sharing her eccentric humor and wisdom. She takes us with her as she walks in the Costa Rican rainforest at night or faces charging reindeer in Mongolia. She shares with us her remarkable ability to enter into sympathetic relationship with all life forms, small as an inchworm, huge as a raging wind. She shows us what healing looks like through the eyes of a born, and extensively trained, healer.

Dear fellow readers, you can trust this storyteller, her humor, her humility, her honesty. Keep your skepticism, as Patricia always encouraged Rebecca to do. But do allow yourself the joy of entering fully into these wonder tales. I believe that as you absorb these stories something in you will ease and open, and you will know, as Rebecca expresses it, that you are "held in the lap of Mother Earth."

- Elizabeth Cunningham
author of The Maeve Chronicles