To Walk in Beauty: A Navajo Family's Journey Home

To Walk in Beauty takes readers on an intimate journey with four generations of the Begay family as they struggle to uphold the mission given to them by their elders to preserve what it means to be Navajo Indian in the 21st Century. The essay documents the family's quest to resurrect the sacred practice of sheep raising, while exploring the gravity of pain and hope associated with loss and recovery, the wisdom gained and nearly lost from the elders, and the sense of promise embodied in traditional ceremonies meant to help the children live life in balance and harmony, to know who they are and where they came from, to walk in beauty.

"Here is a kind of eternal story," writes N. Scott Momaday about the project. "The story of a people diminished to a family, at risk in a diminishing world. The old ways, the patterns of life that determined who and what they were, are being lost. Each new generation moves farther away from origin and meaning. And it is a story of return and restoration."