Outlaw

Author’s Note

Some of my readers know that I was born and raised the son of missionaries in the jungles of Irian Jaya where this novel is set. I didn’t grow up among the Tulim people, because they are a people of my making—rather I grew up among the Dani, a tribe of cannibals north of the Tulim in Outlaw. Indeed, my first language was Dani, the native language which I borrowed for the story you have just read. Yes, “wam” really does mean “pig.”

In many ways, this novel represents broad swaths of my own heritage and upbringing in a land so foreign to the west that most attempts to explain it to Americans returns only blank stares. My hope is that through the power of story you have been able to peer into a culture that, for all of its vast differences from your own, is the same in every respect that makes all humans, human.

Although the Tulim is a fictional valley as are the Tulim people, all of their customs, beliefs and practices are real somewhere in the world, in some tribe, collected here in a fictional setting that mirrors reality. If the people seem real to you, it’s because they essentially are, written by one who knows, from first hand experience, how such a people would believe, feel and live.

In the end, Outlaw is the same journey of awakening and redemption that we may all take, regardless of where we live. It’s the story of losing the world we think keeps us safe to gain our true selves as we were created to be—a lifelong passage that often takes us to the very limits of our understanding only to discover a far richer, and far, far more powerful awareness of love, life and purpose in this thing we call life.

Thank you for taking the journey with me.

Ted Dekker