People of the Whale, Linda Hogan
People of the Whale, Linda Hogan
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People of the Whale
A Novel

Author: Linda Hogan

Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki

Unabridged: 10 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/11/2008

Synopsis

Raised in a small Native American village by the sea, Thomas Witka Just has just married his childhood sweetheart when an ill-fated decision to fight in Vietnam changes his life forever. Cut off from his community and traumatized by war, he finds refuge in another tribal village there and fathers a child with another woman. When he returns home many years later, he finds his tribe in conflict over a decision to hunt a whale, a spiritual symbol for his people. Torn by guilt, yet desperate to return to a life of authenticity, Thomas realizes he must reconcile his two existences if he is to help heal his equally fractured community. With a keen sense of the sacredness of nature and the trauma of war, People of the Whale is a compassionate novel about the painful moral choices humans make and how the lost soul of a man or a people is restored.

About Linda Hogan

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.

About Stefan Rudnicki

Stefan Rudnicki is a Grammy-winning audiobook producer and an award-winning narrator who has won several Audie Awards and been named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices. A longtime fan of Weird fiction, and of Robert W. Chambers in particular, Stefan’s dramatic adaptation of The King in Yellow received the Madolin Cervantes Award from the Society of Stage Directors & Choreographers and was staged by him at the Donnell Library Center in New York City.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Christina on August 07, 2011

I have spent many years studying and working with First Nations in Canada. Their way of understanding the world is one that could teach us a great deal about wholeness, lack of attachment and interconnectedness. In this novel, Linda Hogan, a Native herself, not only tells a truly poignant tale but d......more

Goodreads review by Julie Eilén on June 23, 2016

Wow. Just wow. I have no words for this book yet, I need some time for it to sink in first.......more

Goodreads review by Tamara on October 25, 2017

People of the Whale by Linda Hogan portrays the lives of the A’atsika Nation in a Native American village on the Pacific coast. Hogan integrates Native American mythology and folklore with the daily lives of the A’atsika people to form an intricate web illustrating the importance of wholeness and in......more

Goodreads review by Beth on February 20, 2012

I am on a constant quest to find women writers who speak in stories I can relate to. In Hogan I feel I have found such a writer. Hogan does not shy away from the victimization inherent in her Native character’s lives, but it is with great elegance that she recognizes the circumstances that bring ind......more

Goodreads review by Rosalyn on November 07, 2015

haunting tale with beautifully metaphorical language and insight. 4 1/2 stars......more

Quotes

“Hogan, a poet, essayist, and quintessential econovelist, dramatizes the interconnectivity of cultural extinction, environmental destruction, and war as she parallels Ruth’s courageous defense of the living world with Thomas’ suffering and secret life in Vietnam. She also links the near genocide of aboriginal peoples with the near extinction of marine life. Deeply ecological, original, and spellbinding, Hogan ascends to an even higher plane in this hauntingly beautiful novel of the hidden dimensions of life, and all that is now imperiled.” Booklist (starred review)

“Hogan employs just the right touch of spiritualism in this engrossing tale…[She] comes up with a powerful, romantic crescendo.” Publishers Weekly

“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…Rudnicki’s timing is impeccable.” AudioFile

“Hogan’s combination of mythic and realistic elements results in a spiritual listening experience, while Audie® Award–winning narrator Stefan Rudnicki’s perfectly paced and sonorous diction adds just the right weight. Recommended for public libraries with a demand for Hogan’s earlier works.” Library Journal

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