A review by ericgaryanderson
People of the Whale by Linda Hogan

5.0

Wonderful. As with her other novels, Hogan (Chickasaw Nation) writes about non-Chickasaw Indigenous communities in various parts of North America. Here, she turns to the Pacific Northwest and an oceanic community grappling with issues both specific to its place and community and generally relevant to Native people in the present-day U.S. Childhood sweethearts marry and all goes well until Thomas decides to enlist and go to Vietnam. There he gets sidetracked and traumatized, but he also falls in love with a Vietnamese woman and has a daughter there. Then he's made to go back home, where he feels ghostly and lost. Meanwhile, Ruth, his Native wife, tries to help him in his lostness, when he finally makes his way back to where he was born, and at the same time she leads a powerful life of her own. This novel keeps things complicated by focusing not so much on stark institutional/systemic contrasts (between, for example, US and Native justice/court systems, as in Power) but instead on the complexities of human relationships. This is her best novel, I think, and I want to thank Gina Caison for suggesting it to me.