WLA Literary Awards Committee

The Banta Award 2005

The Turtle Warrior
By Mary Relindes Ellis
Viking, 2004

The 2005 Banta Award BOOK
The Turtle Warrior is Hammond resident Ellis' first novel. It is a powerful tale of two young brothers, Jimmy and Bill Lucas, living on a failing farm in northern Wisconsin with their violent alcoholic father, John, and their beaten-down mother, Claire. The isolation of their farm mirrors the stifling prison of their father's anger. The only escape the brothers find is with loving, childless neighbors, half-Ojibwe Ernie Morriseau and his wife, Rosemary. Both John Lucas and Ernie Morriseau are veterans of World War II. Parallel stories cover their military experiences, their courtships and their very different ideas of manhood.

In 1967, 18-year-old Jimmy enlists to escape his oppressive family life. Eight-year-old Billy is left to defend his mother and himself with a shield made from a turtle shell that he believes has magic powers. Jimmy doesn't come back from Vietnam; however, his troubled spirit haunts the stony fields and forests of his home.

The story continues to the present day with the adult Bill struggling with alcoholism and the emotional and physical scars of his youth with the help of those who love him. This memorable first novel explores the themes of the physical and emotional effects of family violence, the lasting effects of war on those who served and those who waited at home, and the healing powers of love and nature. As Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees, says, "This powerful novel will affect you deeply and linger long."

The AUTHOR
Mary Relindes Ellis

Mary Relindes Ellis was born in Glidden, Mary Relindes Ellis
Wisconsin, in 1960, and lived there until her parents divorced when she was nine. The family then moved to Phillips, Wisconsin, where her mother found employment as a public health nurse and where Ellis
eventually graduated from high school. Following high school graduation, Ellis moved to Minnesota where she obtained a B.A. in English literature with an emphasis on minority and women's literature.

She began her writing career publishing short stories, several of which are segments of her first novel, The Turtle Warrior. Following her mother's casual advice that "we should look at the cultures and history in our own backyard," Ellis went against prevailing advice to move to New York to become a writer and, instead, stayed in the Midwest. Her decision to do that also came, in part, from reading writers such as Willa Cather, Leslie Marmon Silko, Margaret Atwood and Meridel Le Sueur. Le Sueur, in particular, revealed the stories of men and women who did not fit the national stereotype of the Midwest as banal and uneventful - immigrant and native stories more familiar to Ellis' upbringing in northern Wisconsin.

Her first novel, The Turtle Warrior, was a finalist for the Great Lakes Association Book Award, and was a BookSense76 pick for 2004. She is currently at work on her second novel, tentatively entitled Geese.

2005 WLA Literary Awards Committee Members

WLA Literary Awards Commitee