Space Between the Stars My Journey to an Open Heart

Deborah Santana is best known for her marriage to music icon Carlos Santanaa thirty-year bond that endures to this day. But as a girl growing up in San Francisco in the 1960s, daughter of a white mother and a black fatherthe legendary blues guitarist Saunders Kingher life was charged with its own drama long before she married. In this beautiful, haunting memoir, Deborah Santana shares for the first time her early experiences with racial intolerance, her romantic involvement with musician Sly Stone and the suffering she endured in that relationship, and her adventures in the freewheeling 1960s. Yet it is her spiritual awakening that is the core of this story. The civil rights movement was the foundation of her growth, the Woodstock era the backdrop of her love with Carlos. The couple was drawn indelibly together by a search for truth and spirituality, but while yearning to be filled with God's light, they were pulled dangerously toward a manipulative cult. They eventually disengage themselves from the guru and reclaim control of their lives, putting their love for each other before the cult's increasingly strenuous demands. Space Between the Starsis a moving account of self-discovery, rendered in raw, beautiful prose, by a woman whose heart has remained pure even in times of despair. As Deborah Santana talks frankly about her lifelong fight against racial injustice and her deep-seated loyalty to her family, ultimately it is the struggle to remain a spiritual and artistic force in her own right, in the shadow of one of the world's most revered musicians, that shines through as her most indomitable pursuit. From the Hardcover edition.

DEBORAH SANTANA is vice president and COO of the New Santana Band, Inc., and has been managing the Santana Band full-time with her husband of three decades, the Grammy-winning musician Carlos Santana, since 1994. She is also vice president of the Milagro Foundation, which was started by the Santana family and which has given almost $2 million to charities and agencies that support children and youth in the areas of health, education, and the arts. In 2000 she received the UCLA César E. Chávez Spirit Award, which honors individuals who have continued to pursue Chávez’s vision of social justice. In 2004 she received a “Women of Distinction” Award from the Marin Soroptimist organization for her work with the Milagro Foundation. Deborah and Carlos Santana live in San Rafael, California, with their three children. Visit the author’s website at www.deborahsantana.com.


From the Hardcover edition.