N is for Native American

New Grass Growing picks up where River and Ranch left off and it also adds in a few more characters. The new characters are Native Americans. Indians. Northern Shoshone to be specific. Living off the reservation, which in the central Idaho area is supposed to be Fort Hall.

A thread in my writing is using foreign language within the dialogue between characters. Cale, Lane, and Isaac are all the recipients of advanced language work as part of their careers in Special Operations. They know Mandarin, Pashto, and Dari. Along the way they have picked up Spanish and French and some Russian. So now they are all in Salmon. As fate would have it and as my research discovered, the Shoshoni language, although classified as endangered, is still quite active.

In New Grass Growing, some threads end and others open. NGG follows the main characters as they start into their next chapters. The new characters bring along a Native POV, they bring along a teen age girl focus and complement Sabé and Cassidy. And maybe a few more things just to keep it all interesting.

I find languages fascinating. I find what the Shoshone tribe is doing to preserve their language and keep it live to be fascinating as well. I'm working it into my fiction, because I think it is one more example where truth is every bit as interesting as fiction.