Raised in a remote seaside village, Thomas Witka Just marries Ruth, his beloved since infancy. But an ill-fated decision to fight in Vietnam changes his life forever: cut off from his Native American community, he fathers a child with another woman. When he returns home a hero, he finds his tribe in conflict over the decision to hunt a whale, both a symbol of spirituality and rebirth and a means of survival. In the end, he must reconcile his two existences, only to see tragedy befall the son he left behind.
With a keen sense of the environment, spirituality and the trauma of war, People of the Whale is a powerful novel for our time.
Thomas Witka Just is a member of a fictional Northwest tribe with ties to the whale and the octopus. Unexpectedly, he signs up to fight in Vietnam, where he deserts the Army and forms another family. Stefan Rudnicki effectively uses his deep voice to render Thomas as a lost soul and his abandoned wife, Ruth, as the conscience of the tribe. The tribe is also lost, and when it revives the practice of whaling for the wrong reasons, a series of disasters occurs. Although Rudnicki's timing is impeccable--he slows and softens his tone with each tragedy--the overall narration is a bit overly dramatic--in the manner of reading to a child. A.B. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly...
"Hogan employs just the right touch of spiritualism in this engrossing tale...[She] comes up with a powerful, romantic crescendo."
About the Author
LINDA HOGAN was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Mean Spirit. Her other honors include an American Book Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
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