and shelly boyd who was the wife of one of my best friends who died.'s learning the language and became close to my mother. i think her power and her efforts to speak salesh again and to establish a school to speak our tribal languages again. i think the power of women is in the book. >> speaking of the power of women, we talked about one of the women on the front of the book, your mother. tell me about the other. >> yes. my big sister, mary. my half sister, who was this -- you know, as i say in the book, my memories are of this incredibly romantic figure. she ran away to hit ashbury in '70s and got pregnant. and she's incredibly beautiful, like my mother, and smart and charming. i didn't know then that romantic heroes are often aimless nomads in disguise. and my sister died in a drunken house fire with her husband when i was 14. so it was one of the major deaths in my life -- one of the major griefs. and she was the first person who ever told me i could be a writer. i had written a little short story in fourth grade, a halloween story. and she read it