Hotuk (Ho•tuk), The Transcendent Sequoia Tree is an adventure/fantasy story with a backdrop of spiritualism. It begins in the last half of the nineteenth century in the Great American Northwest and carries the reader through the next hundred and fifty years to the same location in the twenty-first century. Boraba (Bor•aba), a spiritually advanced sixteen-year-old Indian brave of the Walak (Wa•lak) Indian tribe of the Cocachee (Co•ca•chee) Indian Nation, is sent alone into the wilderness by his parents and his tribe on his coming-of-age ritual or “Trial-of-Manhood.” After a day’s trek to the north of his village he arrives in the mystical sequoia grove called “Rayohme” (Ray•oh•me), where he is to spend forty days and nights further developing his spirituality and learning self-reliance.Soon after arriving in the grove, Boraba brings one of the prominent sequoia trees to life by carving a face into the surface of the tree. He names the tree “Hotuk” (“seeing tree” in the Walak language) and immediately begins to instruct the spirit of the tree in the ways of the sentient world. The awakening of the spirit of the tree has a lot of positive effects, but it also has one big negative effect. The awakening arouses the all-but-dormant spirit of a malevolent presence named Agregar (Ag•re•gar) that has been residing in the grove for generations.Until the awakening, Agregar was content to spook the occasional visitor with a screech or a howl and subjugate a flock of cantankerous ravens to protect his area of the grove and assist him in warding off intruders to his domain in the grove’s reflecting pool. With another active spirit in the grove his existence is threatened, so he initiates a campaign of fright and terror against Hotuk and the young brave in an attempt to scare them away from what he considers his forest.Boraba and Hotuk counter with a campaign of their own; and—with the help of the forest animals, a gnome-like individual named Oregon, a shaman, a rebellious raven, and a semi-precious stone amulet—they eject Agregar from the grove and send him on his way to whatever fate awaits him.After Agregar’s banishment, Boraba returns to his village and his family; and Hotuk goes on, in the following decades, to experience many diverse individuals passing through the grove, including a shaman who takes him on his own personal vision quest, a beautiful woman that he falls in love with, and a drunken atheist in search of proof of the hereafter.In the end, Hotuk transcends his earthly encumbrances and, with help of a friend from another time, succeeds in attaining his lifelong dream of ascension.This story is a story that will be enjoyed by everyone from sophisticated thirteen-year-old teenage readers to eighty-year-old retirees.
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