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hbkolb 's review for:
I Heard the Owl Call My Name
by Margaret Craven
This book holds a special place in my heart. It is a beautiful story about finding the meaning of life, told gently, softly. The rhythm falls at once melancholy and hopeful. I hope it doesn't read as a white-man-Savior narrative to other people, but I suppose there is the threat of that since it is about a white vicar acclimating to life of a small Native American tribe. But I don't read it that way. I guess the vicar's experience, his being an outsider who has to work and wait patiently to be taken in, resonates with me because I, too, would see the village as an outsider. But the vicar's patience teaches me a little more about what it means to respect another culture. I always wanted to visit British Columbia since reading this book years ago; however, I realize that I couldn't have a similar experience to the vicar: you can't see the heart of a nation or a people as a tourist or passive observer. You have to work, eat, shiver, sweat, and suffer with them. I think too often I have lived in pride with the idea that by reading about or visiting the lands of other people's or cultures that I somehow understand them. But I think that's presumptuous of me.