While looking for Steps High, the horse that had been stolen from her, Kaya faces danger from a sudden mountain fire. American Girls Collection/Kaya #6.

In 1764, when Kaya and her family reunite with other Nez Perce Indians to fish for the red salmon, she learns that bragging, even about her swift horse, can lead to trouble. American Girls Collection/Kaya #1.

When her bragging earns her an unflattering nickname around her Nez Perce camp, Kaya desperately tries to lose it and gain the respect of a young warrior woman named Swan Circling.

For every woman, from the young to those in midlife and beyond, who has ever been told, "You can't" and thought, "Oh, I definitely will!"--this book is for you. Women are expected to be many things. They should be young enough, but not too young; old enough, but not too old; creative, but not crazy; passionate, but not angry. They should be fertile and feminine and self-reliant, not barren or butch or solitary. Women, in other words, are caught between social expectations and a much more complicated reality. Women who don't fit in, whether during life transitions or because of changes in their body, mind, or gender identity, are carving out new ways of being in and remaking the world. But this is nothing new: they have been doing so for thousands of years, often at the margins of the same religious traditions and cultures that created these limited ways of being for women in the first place. In The Defiant Middle, Kaya Oakes draws on the wisdom of women mystics and explores how transitional eras or living in marginalized female identities can be both spiritually challenging and wonderfully freeing, ultimately resulting in a reinvented way of seeing the world and changing it. "Change, after all," Oakes writes, "always comes from the margins."

This book delves into the everyday spaces, diverse mobilities and affective potency of weather. It presents cutting-edge research into the multiplicity of weather phenomena and analyses the lived experiences of humans in conjunction with contemporary issues, notably climate change. The book considers how everyday experiences of weather in the mundane lives of people are linked to broader changes in weather patterns and climate change. Heat, dust, ice, snow, precipitation, sunlight, clouds, tides and fog are states of weather that impact on the ways in which humans become intertwined with landscapes. Our experiences with weather are diverse and ever-changing, and engaging with weather entangles humans with mobilities, materials and landscapes. This book thus explores affective and sensory resonances, drawing upon a variety of theoretical, empirical and creative material to investigate how weather is perceived in different social and cultural contexts. Key themes focus on the mobilities generated by weather, the affective and sensual potency of weather, and the diverse cultural forms and practices that exemplify how weather is historically, geographically and artistically represented. Offering a social and cultural understanding of weather events, this book contributes to a growing literature on weather across various disciplines, including human geography and cultural geography, and will thus appeal to students and scholars of geography, sociology, humanities, cultural studies and the arts.

Feeling lonesome and missing her sister and her horse who were captured by enemy raiders, Kaya befriends a dog that has wandered near camp. Although others warn her not to trust the animal, Kaya senses something different.

The rediscovery of the Knowledge of signs is a philosophy destined to mark the third millennium. Because of its universal character that is accessible and compatible with any spiritual, philosophical or religious background, this ancient Knowledge is able to answer both today’s questions and those of tomorrow. Through simple stories of everyday life, you will learn to decode the symbolic language of signs and coincidences and you will discover that we can interpret concrete situations just like a dream. In this major work on sign interpretations, you will discover a new current of thought and way of thinking that leads to profound change in our way of living. By reading and knowing the meaning of signs, we can develop a personal, one-to-one relationship with Destiny. After reading this book, your life will never be the same.

As someone who clocked more time in mosh pits and at pro–choice rallies than kneeling in a pew, Kaya Oakes was not necessarily the kind of Catholic girl the Vatican was after. But even while she immersed herself in the punk rock scene and proudly called herself an atheist, something kept pulling her back to the religion of her Irish roots. After running away from the Church for thirty years, Kaya decides to return. Her marriage is under stress, her job is no longer satisfying, and with multiple deaths in her family, a darkness looms large. In spite of her frustration with Catholic conservatism, nothing brings her peace like Mass. After years of searching to no avail for a better religious fit, she realizes that the only way to find harmony—in her faith and her personal life—is to confront the Church she'd left behind. Rebellious and hypercritical, Kaya relearns the catechisms and achieves the sacraments, all while trying to reconcile her liberal beliefs with contemporary Church philosophy. Along the way she meets a group of feisty feminist nuns, a "pray–and–bitch" circle, an all–too handsome Italian priest, and a motley crew of misfits doing their best to find their voices in an outdated institution. This is a story of transformation, not only of Kaya's from ex–Catholic to amateur theologian, but ultimately of the cultural and ethical pushes for change that are rocking the world's largest religion to its core.

"Let me tell you a secret--if you have a heart song, anything is possible. Even magic " Kaya is looking for her heart song--the song that happy hearts sing. Her search takes her on a journey deep into the jungle where a broken down carousel waits for a very special song to make it turn again.

"What if you suddenly found yourself in Kaya's Nez Perce homeland in 1764? Your journey back in time can take whatever twists and turns you choose as you select from a variety of options in this all-new multiple-ending story"--