JOAN K. LIPPENS
JOAN K. LIPPENS
Author, Professor, Storyteller
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Joan K. Lippens is a retired college professor who grew up in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada and has lived in Atlantic Canada, the U.S. East Coast, and the Midwest. She taught high school in Kingston, Ontario, middle school in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and adults in Livonia, Michigan, before becoming full-time faculty at Washtenaw Community College (WCC) in Ann Arbor, MI. In addition to teaching first-year college students at WCC, she was the Academic and Career Skills Department Chair (rotating) for 20 years before retiring.
She has published instruction manuals with Pearson Education, the Michigan Reading Journal, the State of Michigan, and the Washtenaw Institute for Workforce Development. She has written for newspapers in the U.S. and Canada and taught art to middle school students in Prince Edward Island.
Joan received her M.A. in Education from Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI, and holds BEd and B.A. degrees from Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario. She lives with her husband in Ann Arbor, MI, close to her four adult children and their families. The Saga of Shawa Alae is her first novel.
New Novel
The Saga of Shawa Alae
Who am I, why am I here, what is love, how will I know it?
Questions about identity, purpose, and ardor are central issues in all adolescent maturity struggles. But love is more than physical attraction between a boy and a girl. Love means taking care of the other person and owning up to responsibility for your actions. The Saga of Shawa Alae addresses these questions.
This coming-of-age adventure is a fireside tale told by Magnus the Wise to his young initiates. It follows the young eagle-human mutant who falls in love with a mermaid and matures to manhood while combating the evil magic of a shaman. The young hero proves his bravery, cunning, and devotion as he takes decisive action during a fantastic migration journey. This young adult novel fuses the boundaries between fantasy and realism. Set in the wilds of the Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick, Canada, the natural world awakens with life on each page.
Imagine that a meteoroid precipitously and magically changed the course of evolution and that human life begins there in a Miramichi River valley. In the spring of the first era on this continent, Shawa Alae, an orphaned, eagle-human mutant, survives side-by-side with his native forest and sky creatures. Even in the beginning, he is more than the rabbits and woodchucks that he hunts. Shawa is a teenager who will soon become a man. In doing so, he learns to take responsibility for the fate that lies before him.
In the saga, reminiscent of 'rite de passage' tales of old, the adolescent sky-boy must come to grips with first love while confronting the push-and-pull of his animal instinct and growing reason. His differences from the other birds and woodland creatures are clear advantages. Still, as an orphaned eagle-human mutant, he questions his life. He takes pride in his independence, but as the other birds are busy taking mates, he is burdened by a nagging loneliness that he can't share even with his closest friend, a sharp shin hawk.
By chance or by fate, Shawa Alae encounters a young mermaid named Grilsella Manatee in his river eddy. She, too, is a mutant. Soon, Shawa decides to make a risky bargain with the Cougar Woman, a shaman who lives on Bald Mountain. She agrees to help him and conjures a magic pearl necklace for him to give Grilsella. But young Shawa Alae is naïve, and he trusts the Cougar Woman, not realizing she would magically control them forever. As the pair’s attraction and love grow, the shaman feels threatened and decides not merely to control them but rather to destroy them. Shawa Alae must now use all his cunning and strength to fight the looming battle for their existence.