In 1699, Dushuuw is a battle-hardened warrior in Wuh-uhch, where his father, Chahbuh\u0165\u0313, is a powerful and revered whaling chief. At 19, he\u2019s the youngestson in his family and grows up in the shadow of his 22-year-old brother, Q\u0313otsik, who\u2019s established himself as a prodigious whaler who\u2019s likely to succeed Chahbuh\u0165\u0313 one day. Dushuuw\u2019s position within the tribe is compromised when he catches a man, Wiikihbis, having sex with his wife, and kills him. The marriage is a strategic one, cementing an important alliance, so the political fallout is considerable. Moreover, the man he killed was a whaler on Q\u0313otsik\u2019s canoe, and now he must take his place\u2014a job he doesn\u2019t relish, and for which he possesses little natural talent; it\u2019s a predicament that Slager portrays with great psychological subtlety and dramatic power. Meanwhile, Amuun\u2019ax\u0331sum, the daughter of another whaling chief,is taken hostage by an invading tribe after they murder her mother and father. She\u2019s later enslaved by Eekbis, the shaman of Dushuuw\u2019s tribe. She longs to recapture the nobility that she now must hide to stay alive. Amuun\u2019ax\u0331sum and Dushuuw fall in love, but their prospects for happiness seem dim, given the social expanse that separates them. Also, a disastrous earthquake and tsunami threatens to end their lives before they can make a bid for romantic bliss. <\/p>\n
Slager\u2019s novel is based on the Makah tribe, who live in the Cape Flattery area of what is now Washington state, and she brings the everyday lives and customs of its people into vivid relief. The natural disaster that waylaid the tribe is a real one, with her research into it and scholarly command of all the relevant source material nothing short of magisterial. Readers get a remarkable glimpse into a whaling community before European contact. However, this book is, first and foremost, a novel, and it tells an engrossing story. Both the principal characters are portrayed with notable nuance, and their budding relationship is both plausible and moving. Some people in Dushuuw\u2019s tribe wonder if he\u2019s more trouble than he\u2019s worth, due to his taste for violence: \u201cA man who takes that much human life\u2014perhaps the spirit of the whale cringes from it, you see?\u201d Dushuuw hears an elderly man say. \u201cIs there really a way to get rid of so much human stench, such darkness of heart?\u201d Amuun\u2019ax\u0331sum also proves to be a compelling character, and Slager depicts the burden of her grief\u2014over the loss of her family, and of her noble identity\u2014with affecting complexity: \u201cShe wanted to fill a river with tears, and shoot her fear to the moon. She wanted a bench, not a mat. To own things, not hide them. A home. A voice. A name\u2014to be known.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1699, Dushuuw is a battle-hardened warrior in Wuh-uhch, where his father, Chahbuh\u0165\u0313, is a powerful and revered whaling chief. At 19, he\u2019s the youngestson in his family and grows up in the shadow of his 22-year-old brother, Q\u0313otsik, who\u2019s established himself as a prodigious whaler who\u2019s likely to succeed Chahbuh\u0165\u0313 one day. Dushuuw\u2019s position […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2961"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}