Mother, Heal Myself, an Intergenerational Healing Journey between Two Worlds, by Joellen Koerner. Santa Rosa, Calif, Crestport Press, 2003. 211 pages, softcover, $14.95.

This is a mother-daughter relationship and a story with some unusual aspects. Joellen Koerner, a Mennonite who spent all of her early life in a Mennonite colony in South Dakota, tells of her experience and their outcomes in interaction of the major culture with the native culture of an American Indian tribe (the Lakotas) and a development of understandings that may occur as a result of this total interaction experience.

The conceptual understanding of this phenomenon stems primarily from her daughter's difficult pregnancy and its outcome. The Mennonite concept of being helpful, as well developed as it is within the faith, takes a new and powerful aspect when the input of the native culture enhances and stimulates very helpful insights into the positive effects that the total impact of all the variables may have for constructive human adaptation.

Readers, with thoughtful reflection, can be stimulated to make the cultural moves and synergy of insight to open a stronger understanding into how to manage the lives of patients in a much stronger way when taking the role of the other as a catalyst for a more useful form of action.

Thoughtful insights come more naturally when the total interaction is visualized in its constructive way than in depending upon stereotypical thinking and action. The application of this approach, in all its subtleties, can be used to generate more helpful responses for patients needs.