CINCINNATI -- Alone as a child tucked in at night, Mary Annette Pember had visions. “Strings of lights, rather like phosphorescent snakes,” she writes, would float along the ceiling of her bedroom, turning and twisting in the dark. When she asked what the strange lights could be, her mother, an Ojibwe from northern Wisconsin, urged her not to be afraid: They want to protect you; they won’t hurt you, but don’t ever tell anyone else you see them. Her mother knew what it took to survive.