Phyllis Cole-Dai Book Signing and Presentation

Author and editor Phyllis Cole-Dai will join DDR Books on Saturday, Oct. 19, from 2 to 4 pm to present on and sign her new book, “Beneath the Same Stars,” available for $14.95.

“Beneath the Same Stars” is a novel “inspired by actual events surrounding the US-Dakota War. August 18, 1862: On the Sioux reservation in southwestern Minnesota, Indians desperate for food and freedom rise up against whites in the region. Sarah Wakefield, the wife of a physician, is taken captive with her two babies. Their fate falls into the hands of the warrior Caske, with whom she has slim acquaintance. As war rages, little does she know how entwined their lives will become.”

DDR Books has in stock two of her previous works. First, “The Emptiness of Our Hands: 47 Days on the Streets” ($14.95), a meditative chronicle of her and photographer James Murray’s experience of living “by choice on the streets of Colombus, Ohio…. They went to the streets to practice presence: to offer nonjudgmental attention and compassion to everyone they met, especially the chronically homeless, who are so often ignored, scorned, abused, or shunned.”

DDR Books also has her anthology of mindfulness poems, “Poetry of Presence” ($21.95), a collection of more than 150 mindfulness poems, mostly by contemporary or recent poets, both acclaimed or lesser known. These poems call us to the Here and Now, and help us to dwell there.”

Phyllis Cole-Dai has edited or authored nine books in multiple genres, including historical fiction, spiritual nonfiction and poetry. She resides with her husband, teenage son and two cats in a cozy 120-year-old house in Brookings, South Dakota.