I consider myself one of the luckiest men around. My writing has been shaped by my dual cultural background part Lakota, part child of the prairie grasses, and sweeping sky, but also I've been privileged to be mentored by great thinkers and writers. This doesn't count the writers who mentored me through their writing. The moral questions for The Nun Who Killed Sparrows of my story are gleaned from a Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel's seminar, teaching me that eternal truths are not arrived through logic so much as through the stories we construct out of life experiences. This story comes from an examination of events from my childhood, which put me on my present track, determined to teach, write, and find God's hand in the world around me. In Lakota literature there is a familiar saying, "Brave up Brother it is a good day to die," but that's misleading because death is not the ending it is for westerners. Stories go on, souls become, the dappling of light on running water, fireflies in the grass, the brush of butterfly wings, the call of an owl, the swirling of a dust devil, the wind-songs of aspen and pine. So I want to thank all my students who've inspired me, and all those who've kept on loving words, and stories, and words.