Motherhood begins from the moment a woman conceives. Mother and baby have an immediate bond. The ability to create life and bring it into the world is magical and changes a woman emotionally, physically and mentally. An example of an extraordinary mother-daughter bond in history would be that of Native American women and their daughters. In A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris, the bond between the three main characters, Rayona, Christine, and Ida is in complete contrast to that of the Native American women. The first part of the story begins with Rayona's point of view. She is a fifteen year old girl, half black and half Native American. Rayona's mother, Christine, is an alcoholic and is extremely ill because of it. She makes immature decisions and Rayona is forced to follow her. Christine and Rayona do not communicate, they are completely different from each other. Christine runs away from her problems while Rayona tries to solve them. An example is in the novel where Christine decides to leave Seattle and return to her previous reservation. When they arrive, Aunt Ida, Christine's mother, is shocked to see her there, so Christine runs away and Rayona chases her because she longs for her love. Upset that her mother left for no reason, she looks at the ground and hates it. He calls it ugly and to get rid of it he pulls it in frustration while thinking, “No matter how much I pull, there is more. I will never clean it all and yet I can't stop" (Dorris 32). Here, the dirt symbolizes the ugliness of Rayona's life and how much she wants to clean it up but will never get clean. Christine's behavior towards Rayona is anything but maternal She is an alcoholic drug addict who... at the center of the paper... the individual stories of dad, Christine and Rayona” (Roby64). themselves cannot separate. Ida ends the novel with a startling statement about their stories that they call their lives, "three threads, the whispers of coming and going, of twisting and binding and bending, of grasping and letting go, of entwining" (Dorris372 ) Although their relationships are not exactly what Native American women would consider ideal, it is applied with love. Ida, Christine and Rayona each struggle with something different because they have different personalities a similarity, love, which ultimately unites these three women as a whole. They are three Native American women whose lives intertwine with each other and create this absolutely beautiful bond.