Many artists dream of turning their art into a career, but for Warren native, artist and author Barbara Salvatore, her bloom into a celebrated novelist literally started with a dream nearly 30 years ago in upstate New York.

“I was riding a big black horse and I was covered in seed pouches and bags around my waist and neck and shoulders and my horse was covered with parfleches and seed sacks. And we were being led by a dog, whose ears were up, over a pine ridge,” she recalled with near photographic memory. “And when we got over the edge and looked down, there's a woman in a faded blue dress crouched on the ground planting in spirals and snakes and curvy waves, there were no straight lines. Behind her was a shining river and on the other side the river were limestone cliffs. And we watched her and then the dog barked, and in real life a dog barked across the street, and woke me up.”

Unbeknownst to her at the time, the vivid dream would set her on a journey that would lead her to purchase two huge horses, move to Nebraska, be run over by a wagon, learn a native language on the verge of extinction, and publish a series of books that celebrated all at once the utility of traditional plants, the vibrancy of the Ponca Native American Tribe, and connected everything together that had at one time been nothing more than a surreal vision from a seemingly different realm.

Salvatore’s amazing journey is better heard directly from her, which you can do on Monday, May 15 at 6:30 p.m. at the George Haile Library on Main Street, where she will be discussing and performing readings from the first two books in her four-book series, “Big Horse Woman,” and “Magghie”, which focus on separate but connected characters as they traverse multi-faceted challenges from their unique perspectives.

Salvatore said the books are meant to impart the importance of recognizing and utilizing traditional plants and honoring the heritage of native tribes, and their connection to the natural world.

“I want to encourage people all over the world, and hope that this can be a worldwide sort of learning that there's no such thing as a ‘weed’, and that we have to reconnect with the allies, which are our plants,” she said. “They work with us. They grow with us, to grow beside us.”

She resides in Nebraska, where she moved in 2011 to become closer to the local Ponca Tribe, which she was able to pinpoint as the tribe featured in her dream after doing research on the unique environment. She spent years learning their language and has become close with tribal leaders, becoming an adopted sister of the tribe. She is a trained herbalist and a specialist in keeping big horses, which are featured prominently in her art and within the books.

Growing up in Warren, Salvatore recalls fondly exploring the natural environment of the East Bay and pursuing an arts education, which she found through a summer program at RISD before moving on to receiving her BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York.

“I have lots of good memories about being a child there. I’ve been reminiscing a lot about my first experiences with exploring plants and wild things, crawling around in fields and climbing trees. A lot of good memories in that respect,” she said. “School was fun. I had a lot of great teachers. I especially appreciated Tom Collins and Mr. Bob Evans. Mary Parks, and of course Charles January, the art teacher, he always encouraged me.”

Coming home to Warren after so many years, Salvatore feels as though a long journey has come full circle.

“It's just not at all what I would have ever dreamed would happen,” she said. “I’m living a life that follows in the footsteps of my dreams.”