Saturday, April 16, 2016

When Raven Dances –by Polly Bigelow

Fiction / Coming of Age

310 pages / 2228 KB
4 Stars

When Marisol is a young girl, her father is killed at Anzio in WWII. Marisol's mother decides to take her young daughter, and move from the light and warmth, and security, of their home in New Mexico to the almost frontier of Seward, Alaska.

This book is a delightful telling of Marisol's adventures as she leaves her Navajo friends, her Irish and Mexican families, and goes north to the land of the midnight sun – and the midday darkness of winter. Told as a faux memoir, we are transported by train and by ship to Seward. We make new friends, partake of childhood high jinx, and learn new stories of Coyote and Raven, the Tricksters.


All but the last chapter of this book takes place in the 1940s, and it's a delightful read of history seen through a young girl's eyes. This is a book to be savored, read slowly. It is not filled with adrenaline, but with soft beauty. I think Raven would approve of this book.

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