About the Talking Stick - From the Author's Perspective - Donna Levin.  Hunter Fitzgerald has a problem.   Well, two problems, actually.  She’s lost her job as a fitness center manager, her husband has left her for one of their friends after running up a $40,000 debt on their joint credit card, and now, though she’s frantically making calls and sending emails in search of a new position, her professional contacts are ghosting her. Desperate for money to pay her electric bill, she gathers her William Shatner Christmas albums and heads to the local flea market to sell them.  There she meets a mysterious woman who gives her an ancient Navajo talking stick with the implied promise that it will come in handy. Through a series of accidents that might-not-be accidents, Hunter soon meets three other women: Dannika, a young woman mourning her mother’s death, Alicia, an obstetrician with a troubled teenage daughter, and Penelope, an older woman in denial about her Valium...

Synopsis: The Talking Stick - Donna Levin - April 2024 Four women find humor, truth, and a better path forward by deconstructing memory and emotion. Hunter is lost. Her husband left her for her best friend, she’s unemployed with no prospects, and the San Francisco flea market she’s wandering on a weekday is so foggy that she literally doesn’t know where she is. But after a helpful visit and a gift from a stranger, Hunter resolves to find her way. She begins a support group for women looking for new beginnings. The Talking Stick is the adventure of Hunter and the three women who join her reclamation journey. Together, they reexamine their pasts, exploring their grief, addictions, parenting, and marriages.  In doing so, they discover that some of their most-cherished memories are romanticized versions of the truth.  Meanwhile, they unearth other memories – memories that challenge how they’ve been living for years.  The Talking Stick is a fast-paced dramedy set i...