LaSilva Bentley grew up in a crowd. The youngest of five children born on her father's ancestral Montana ranch and overshadowed by her eldest twin sisters and her brothers, LaSilva seeks the companionship of her grandfather, his horses, and the forest to avoid the frenetic competition among her siblings for their parents' attention. The family splinters as the children move into their adult lives, and LaSilva will spend years seeking to piece together her artist mother's mysterious past and clues to the unreasoning anger of her father. His sister, LaSilva's Aunt Bliss-who escaped the ranch at a young age to become a wealthy, eccentric, cosmic Californian-is LaSilva's lifelong mentor and patron. While still in her twenties LaSilva begins having vivid dreams. She sees haunting images lifted randomly from various centuries across America, odd windows into historic lives of ordinary people. She begins painting the dreams, understanding little of them, but knowing the importance of documenting them on canvas. She senses they relate somehow to her family and shows them to Bliss, who coaches her in the interpretation of dreams to further LaSilva's search for the pieces to the family puzzle. She remains close to her mother and over time reconnects with her siblings. But even in his elder years, her father cannot seem to accept her or the bohemian life she has chosen to lead. She observes reflections of her dreams in the lives of her family members, and by the time of her mother's late-life illness LaSilva has spent three decades gathering the metaphorical puzzle pieces that form The Big Picture of the family bloodline. But it isn't until her parents pass on that the final pieces fall into place.
About the Author: C R Strahan has lived in the American West from New Mexico to the Pacific Northwest, with a quarter century in Colorado. She writes of conflict and controversy on the canvas of the western landscape, painting stories of family where money meets nature, cultures collide, and personal values are called into question. Her first novel The Roan Maverick, based on the history of Wyoming's Cattle War, resulted from her tenure as research assistant to the foremost authority on the subject and has received uncommon praise from the descendants of both sides of that historical insurrection. Her second novel, Sleeping With Eagles, was written from the context of her years of living in Colorado's Eagle Valley and chronicles the modern life of the ranching Delaney family, who in the 1970s find themselves entering dilemma as Vail begins to boom and tourism threatens to overturn the agricultural economy they have spent five generations building. In novel three, Lucid Dreaming, Strahan explores the history of a contemporary Montana ranching family's genetic bloodline as well as their cosmic bloodline, and the mysterious connection between past-life encounters and ancestry. Watercolor draws Past into Present and Spirit into Flesh in a fast-paced thriller of transformation in its simplest and most complex forms. In her novel Tango's Mirror a world renowned actor faces the dilemma fame has dealt him: The secret of his extraordinary art was his ability to observe human interaction anonymously, thereby gaining insight into the emotions on display in ordinary life-it was his ability to become a fly-on-the-wall that made him famous, and fame has destroyed his ability to become a fly-on-the-wall. C R Strahan has eight years of higher education in Humanities, with emphasis in English & Literature, Fine Art, History, and Business Administration. A student of Core Shamanism, she is descended from Cowboys & Indians; Ranchers & Sodbusters; Builders & Artists-and independent women ahead of their time. She currently resides in the Montana.