What do you do when you're approaching fifty and your twenty-something daughter invites you to an arts-festival adventure for which the tickets state, "You voluntarily assume the risk of serious injury or death by attending";?
Well, if you come from the B.C. Interior where nearly nine hundred forest fires are raging, of course, you agree to go to the Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert.
However, it's not only local forest conflagrations and the blazing creativity of artists gathered in the scorching heat of the Nevada desert that Barnhardt-Kawatski must confront and survive. Breathing deeply into her past, she also must face, once again, the suffocating anxiety and searing self-doubt that threatened to consume her when she was a young woman. Three decades earlier, in a courageous attempt to extinguish these inner fears, the author had also chosen to leave her Shuswap home. She headed for Europe and from there, made her way through the feverish intensities of the Middle East to complete her journey in the crucible of India.
Barnhardt-Kawatski demonstrates her considerable skills as she deftly interlaces the two stories of past and present. In this "true & transformative travel tale";, the writer's attention to detail and her willingness to tell the whole and unvarnished truth engages the reader at a deeply personal level. But she also beautifully illustrates that all true literature tells a story beyond the apparent narrative.
To paraphrase writer Flannery O'Connor, we all must make our way past the dragon. And "[n]o matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell...";
Burning Man, Slaying Dragon is both an engaging read and a rich exploration of what it means to be on the human journey.

by Shelley Corbin