Weather’s Store: Encounters with the Sacred

Books that are emotionally engaging, passionately crafted, and infused with hope.

Weather’s Store: Encounters with the Sacred

In Weather’s Store: Encounters with the Sacred, Jessie Eaton leaves her home and sets out on a drive with no destination in mind. Seeing a wrought-iron sign, Weather’s Store, she is intrigued and feels compelled to stop. At that moment time splits and she begins an adventure with spiritual and life-transforming consequences. From her first meeting with Weather, the stores enigmatic owner, Jessie’s illusions and beliefs are challenged. Whether Jessie’s encounters are with the magic and mysticism of the enchanting northern New Mexico landscape or with a healing curandera, terrifying Indian witches or a traditional northern New Mexican woman, Jessie finds empowerment in new perspectives of dignity, acceptance and purpose.

Weather’s Store: Encounters with the Sacred is a highly compressed, sensual and suspenseful story. Its unique and meditative qualities explore the traditions and ancient methods of spiritual healing through herbs, rituals, and ceremonies. Mesmerizing and deeply empowering, it weaves the elegance and spirituality of Indian and northern New Mexican cultures into a journey of self-discovery and deep understanding of the demands of individual destiny for Jessie and for the readers. The writing is fluid, rich, and rhythmic, staying with the reader long after the last line is read.

Reviews

Weather’s Store Kindle

I really enjoyed this fantastic story about a woman coming to understand herself and her place in the world. The main character is filled with self-doubt and has lost her love for living. She feels compelled to leave everything behind her, and seeks wisdom from a very interesting and imaginative cast of characters in Northern New Mexico. The visual imagery is rich, and takes you on a fantastic journey filled with witches, a curandera , and a slew of other characters that all play a role in Jessie’s transformation. It is a delightful distraction, and deals with issues most everyone can relate to.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Journey

What a wonderful and detailed journey of self realization through the spiritual, cultural and scenic wonders of New Mexico. Chapter after chapter I was transported to many of my favorite places, and the interesting and realistic characters make the story come alive. I could feel the crisp air and see the beautiful valley as I read with growing anticipation of the lessons to be learned. This book is a must read for anyone seeking self awareness or for those just seeking a great story with beautiful imagery. Well done!

Weather’s Store

Weather’s Store

Jessie’s experiences (the searching, the frustrations, the longing for something elusive, realizations and revelations) tugged at me as I journeyed with her. I wanted to jump in my car and drive until I found Weather’s Store. I want to experience that apocalyptic storm of awareness! Your writing style is poetic prose – fluid and tangible, chewy and gritty to the point of being sensual. I could see, smell, hear, and feel the wind, the rain, the moods, everything. I admire your exquisite use of language. Now I’m eager to read your poetry.

Weaving the Wind

People write for many reasons: therapy, artmaking, community. Thelma Giomi’s poems originate, in some ways, from all of these impulses. Being diagnosed with lupus, a painful autoimmune disease, meant that, for much of her life, Giomi needed to find a way to face each day with hope. Poetry, her family, and her love of the New Mexico landscape have helped her along the way.

Giomi, who holds a PhD in clinical and developmental psychology, is the author of three novels and three volumes of poetry. Like so many authors, Giomi finds inspiration in nature—its cycles, its perseverance, its uncanny way of illuminating the human spirit through metaphor. The wind serves as a controlling metaphor in this collection, moving through the human landscape, bringing change. The stars also serve as a powerful metaphor for the interconnectedness of human beings with both the environment and each other.

In “Si La Va Va” the poet writes “They’ve lived the words that are in my bones, / Like the coded pattern of my illness.” Everywhere, Giomi sees a link between language and the body.

In a powerful poem about language and power, the poet tells the story of walking with a small child who wonders at the wind, seeking the right word for it. She writes, “Oblivious now to what had enchanted him / Moments before I gave him that word. / The word that bound up senses and wonder and magic / Dismissing them into knowing.” Giomi has a deft touch for expressing this awe and curiosity, and for acknowledging the ways people don’t let these feelings into their daily lives. If the book has one clear message, it is to appreciate the world and those within it.

For people working through an illness, or for their caregivers, this volume offers an empathetic voice. Many will recognize their own reactions and suffering, and they will be inspired by Giomi’s efforts to transcend circumstances and find wonder in her world.

Weather’s Store – Craig Machemehl

Fantastic Journey. What a wonderful and detailed journey of self realization through the spiritual, cultural and scenic wonders of New Mexico. Chapter after chapter I was transported to many of my favorite places, and the interesting and realistic characters make the story come alive. I could feel the crisp air and see the beautiful valley as I read with growing anticipation of the lessons to be learned. This book is a must read for anyone seeking self awareness or for those just seeking a great story with beautiful imagery. Well done!

Weather’s Store – Brian Machemehl

Weather’s Store – Linda Spalding

Weather’s Store – Kirkus

Striking novel about a woman who is drawn to an enigmatic store through which she begins a spiritual journey involving beings from ancient and traditional cultures inhabiting the raw landscape.

Feeling disconnected from her life, a woman named Jessie stumbles on a “bone-white” store by the lakeshore in northern New Mexico. A heavy wrought-iron sign reads “Weather’s Store,” and the place gives Jessie the sensation of an old dream. From there, she meets the mysterious, green-eyed Weather and is introduced to a host of characters, including frightening Indian witches; Maya, a weaver and healer; surreal, powerful women spirits; Azteca Marta, an herbalist; Marta’s son Mateo, the blended soul of New Mexico; old Juan Antonio; and a heartbreaking, hopeless Indian adolescent. Alternately frustrated, confused, awed and intrigued, Jessie comes to a deeper understanding and acceptance of her destiny through these mystical mentors and guides. Unlike traditional novels, Giomi’s work presents a series of parables and haikus utilizing the land, cultures and people of New Mexico, to which the author, a native of the same region, feels a deep connection. These fragments can have elegance and depth, such as when homemade crosses marking death are equated to “resting places…reminders to stop and remember and, then with infinite patience, to bless what must be left behind.” Giomi doesn’t romanticize the primitivism and poverty of this part of the world while recognizing its power, beauty and sacred quality and respecting its wisdom. She touches on the tragic alcoholism prevalent among Native Americans, particularly youth, who are “trapped between two worlds” and often die young of alcohol abuse, homicide, suicide and despair. Her background as a psychologist occasionally reflects in the “work” Jessie is encouraged to do (“To embark on any journey…you must confront what is hiding in the darkness” or “admit the wound”), but the ultimate journey is metaphysical, a reclamation of the soul. Weather is represented literally by rain, winds and snow and becomes a metaphor for the tempests of the human spirit.

One woman’s search for self in New Mexico achieves an abstract, meditative beauty.