This is one of the most beautifully written books I've read in a long time. Hogan, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, tells the story of Thomas and Ruth, members of a fictional Native American community on the Washington coast. Not long after their wedding, Thomas enlists to fight in Vietnam, and both of their lives are changed forever. Thomas, missing in action for a long time, ultimately starts a family in Vietnam. Ruth bears his son and raises him alone. When found and forced to return to the states, Thomas does not come home. It is only when some of the men of the tribe decide to initiate a supposedly tradtional whale hunt does Thomas return. The results of the hunt are tragic and disastrous, but they move Thomas in the direction of healing.

This book is mystical, exquisitely beautiful and terribly painful. It is well worth reading. ( )

Thomas Just returns from Vietnam and disappears from his family (wife Ruth and son Marco Polo), having abandoned another child, Lin, in Vietnam, until he gets word of a tribal whale killing to take place. This horrible corruption of an act once intimately connected to nature for these People of the Whale is indicative of how far removed they are from their roots (they murder a young whale, who had only come close to greet them, rather than a whale that, traditionally, they would ask to offer itself up to feed their people)--all actually part of a money deal made by corrupt tribal counsel. Marco, a special one, student of the old ways, is murdered on the hunt for protesting the killing of the young whale. Eventually Lin turns up in the village to reconcile with Thomas, and Dwayne, the corrupt tribal leader ends up dead, so it ties up fairly neatly. There's some cool oddness where a rainmaker is summoned to ease the drought brought on by the violation of killing the young whale--a rainmaker who turns out to be the octopus (in human form) who came ashore at the time of Thomas's birth. These are the touches that make the book worth reading--the mystic connection with nature the native people originally possessed, etc. Set in a seaside village not quite identified in Washington state. ( )

This is a thought provoking book about war and relationships with others and one's sense of self. It takes place in an Eskimo village that reveres the whale. It's short but stimulates reflection. ( )