Beyond the Four Corners of the World: A Navajo Woman's Journey

This biographical portrait of a Navajo woman and her family holds important lessons for those seeking to restore bonds of family and community. College-educated Ella Bedonie, born on a northern Arizona reservation in 1952, and her husband, Dennis, an elementary school counselor, navigate two worlds--Native American and white, sacred and secular. At the age of six, Ella was forced to attend a government boarding school, where she endured beatings and was punished for speaking Navajo. Then she spent 10 years with a protective Mormon foster family in California, after which she returned to the reservation to confront a longstanding Navajo-Hopi land dispute (the focus of Benedek's The Wind Won't Know Me), which jeopardized her parents' ranch and camp: Ella's future inheritance. In 1989, she and Dennis moved to Flagstaff, Arizona, and built a house, but their teenage son, Kimo, joined a gang and dropped out of school. Diagnosed with breast cancer, Ella moved her family back to the reservation; Kimo straightened out and her cancer went into remission. Benedek evokes Navajo society, customs and a cosmos in which the gods are nearby and life is imbued with purpose. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)