In The Reason for Crows, award-winning author Diane Glancy continues her project begun in Pushing the Bear: A Novel of the Trail of Tears and Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea. Imagining the
interior voice of Kateri Tekakwitha, Glancy relays the story of the young, seventeenth-century Mohawk woman who would later become known as the "Lily of the Mohawks." Left frail, badly scarred,
and nearly blind from a smallpox epidemic that killed her parents, Kateri nevertheless takes part in the daily activities of her village - gathering firewood, preparing meals, weaving; and
treating the wounded after skirmishes with the French and enemy tribes. When the Jesuits arrive in her village, she receives their message and converts to Christianity. In this imaginative and
poetic retelling, Kateri's interior voice is intertwined with the interior voices of the Jesuit missionaries - the crows - who endured their own hardships crossing the ocean and establishing
missions in an unfamiliar land. Together, they tell a story of spiritual awakening and the internal conflicts that arise when cultures meet.
