Book Testimonials

ANNOUNCING DARRELL NEW PLENTY STARS' HOME GOING ON AUGUST 11TH, 2013. DARRELL PASSED FROM LIFE TO GLORY IN HIS SLEEP, ON SOUTH DAKOTA'S PINE RIDGE RESERVATION WHERE HE WAS BORN. AS HE MENTIONED AT THE END OF THIS PAGE, LONG HAD HE LOOKED FORWARD TO MEETING AND THANKING HIS GRANDFATHER, RED FISH, FOR ESCAPING THE WOUNDED KNEE MASSACRE, SO THAT HE, HIS GRANDSON, COULD BE BORN TO FIND SALVATION IN JESUS CHRIST. DARRELL WAS 66. HIS WIFE, ROSE, THEIR FOUR CHILDREN AND SEVERAL GRANDCHILDREN REMAIN TO CARRY ON WITHOUT HIM. HE WOULD ALWAYS SIGNED OFF ON OUR PHONE CONVERSATIONS WITH, "I'LL MEET YOU HERE, THERE, OR IN THE AIR." YES, BROTHER, BUT UNTIL THEN, YOU WILL BE MISSED. 

I AM SO VERY GRATEFUL TO THE LORD AND TO DARRELL AND ROSS FOR SHARING THEIR STORY WITH ME SO THAT IT SOULD BE RECORDED IN HIS BOOK.

SHIRLEE EVANS

Darrell’s own Reflections on his Book

~ From the Flames of Wounded Knee to the Center of God’s Will ~

When the publisher first released my book I tried to promote it off the reservation here in South Dakota, visiting churches and Christian book stores. Several store managers told me they were not interested because I had not included ancient Indian religion, culture, and customs. But that had not been my purpose. The book is about my life as a Native American today. It’s about the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 which, in the 1970s, led to what we here call, Wounded Knee Two, brought about because of conditions on our reservation at that time. The book is about my anger and hopelessness before finding peace the day the Lord sent an elderly white missionary all the way from Pennsylvania.

Now I’m discovering that my own people are reading the book after finding it on the Internet, expressing to me how the book has blessed them. A number of younger men, and women too, tell me they are going through many of the same struggles, stumbling into the same failures, that I’d wrestled with. “I know now,” one of them told me, “there is hope for me, too.”

An old man here on our Pine Ridge Reservation told me he planned to read one chapter a night. But the next time I saw him he said, “I couldn’t put it down, finishing it in the early morning hours.”      

This all humbles me, discovering how the book—with God in it rather than ancient Indian curiosities—is making a difference in the lives of my Indian brothers and sisters. Often I meet them at our Pine Ridge Post Office. One lady came up to me the other day, commenting, “God bless you, Darrell. Our people are reading your book.”

It is giving me opportunities to introduce them to my Lord and Savior. My desire is not to make a lot of money, but to open people’s eyes to what Christ has done for them. Continually I find myself thanking Him for those who are being saved, converts who want to be baptized, and for prayers that are being answered. It is not me, but the work of the Holy Spirit that’s turning their dejection to hope. As God continues to bless this book, my prayer is that people everywhere will come to know the Lord—here on our reservation, across our state and far beyond. Perhaps even in other parts of the world.

I look forward to the day I meet my grandfather, Rev. James Red Fish, in heaven. I long to thank him for making good his escape from the Wounded Knee Massacre as a boy that claimed the lives of his family (our family), for turning to the Lord, and for the legacy he has handed down to me. A minister of God remarked to me the other day, “The Lord is surely using you, Darrell, for His purpose.”

May God Bless each and everyone of you,

In His service, Rev. Darrell New Plenty Stars

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota

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P.S.

 [Oh my... I am so humbly thankful for everyone who has logged onto our Website here since my Guideposts Magazine story came out in the November 2009 issue. I look forward to every message left on our Guestbook Page. Shirlee Evans - my book's co-author - calls and reads them to us, I then tell her how to respond to each one. We give the Lord thanks everyday, for without His leading and guidance the book and the Guideposts story would never have been published. We are grateful to Jim Hinch, our Guideposts editor, for his help and belief that a short segment of my story needed to be told within the pages of their magazine. The magazine story hits on only a few highlights of our lives. If you are able to order the book you will find the first half tells of my rebellion and wild ways. After I turned my life over to the Lord, Rose and I became involved (in a minor way) with the 1973 Wounded Knee standoff. The rest of the book deals with the ups and downs of our ministry through the years to today.