In Grandmother's House is the fascinating true story of a boy's childhood in a remote Thai village. Brought up by his grandmother – the village matriarch, healer and midwife – Sorasing Kaowai retells some of the folk stories, traditions and superstitions that his grandmother passed on to him, including the strange tale of a mysterious forest-dwelling tribe of pygmies, a fifteen-meter-long python and even a local Bigfoot!
Sorasing recounts how village healers diagnosed and treated illnesses with a ball of sticky rice and a length of string or, in especially difficult cases, an egg. He explains why some Thai men were, and still are, terrified of being visited by Phi Mae Mai, a female ghost with an insatiable sexual appetite, and he remembers his delight at seeing his first tractor, only to be warned off the machine by his grandmother: And what does a tractor return to the Earth Mother?
Thailand has developed greatly since Sorasing's grandmother returned to the Earth Mother last century. Many of the ancient rural traditions that influenced and guided her long life have now been lost and forgotten. In Grandmother's House preserves at least a few of them for future generations.
