A story about an old man, one of the last who remembers the old ways, and his relationships with his remaining children and grandchildren in southeastern Alaska. He knows he is an old man and he doesn't know what to do about it. There are no others like him. When his grandson James is in a terrible accident that ends the boy's hopes of a basketball career, Keb tries to help him by showing him the peace that results from learning the old ways. ( )

Beautiful. That is the only adjective I can furnish to describe this book. A tantalizing glimpse of a traditional world beset by technological advances and materialistic unfurling of the historic family structure. Confronted by this spectre, an old man decides to undertake one last journey on the lake of his ancestors much to the chagrin of the modernist world. He is joined by recalcitrant youths hoping to discover their identity in the face of modernity. This is the quintessential Alaskan novel. A study of mankind's hearts and minds. Jimmy Bluefeather-a well written fiction but a realistic study of human nature. ( )

I found this well conceived and well written storyline exceptional and engrossing, with enough different characters and connected threads to keep a reader attentive, or a lazy reader annoyed. A story both inspiring and poignant, with a bonus in conveying much more than the printed words with insights to spare.

“Used to be it was hard to live and easy to die. Not anymore. Nowadays it was the other way around. ”

“Wasn’t it enough, Keb wondered, to feel the wind in your face, to drink the rain and pet a friendly dog and know the softness of a woman’s thigh? Wasn’t it enough to hear a wolf howl, to build a morning fire in the kitchen cookstove, to taste the first nagoonberry pie of summer, to carve a spoon from alder? Wasn’t it enough to feel the tide run beneath your boat, a boat you built with hand tools and great heart?”

“More and more though, men died in the wreckage of their own lives, shadowed by false prophets, lost in the thumping, grinding world those same men created for reasons that didn’t seem reasonable anymore. ”

“. . . we like someone because; we love someone although.”

“. . . when men set out to destroy each other, the first victim was always the same: truth.”

“Old Keb figured that if a greedy man could put his money where his mouth is, stuff it all in there, then he couldn’t talk anymore and that would be a good thing . . . men that are often wrong but never in doubt.”

“ . . . the hardest thing when you’re digging yourself into a hole is to stop digging.”

“You don’t have to master nature. You only have to master yourself.”

“ . . . the best revenge is the one not taken.”

And the eco-lit aspect has teeth.

“Highly regarded scientists see the natural world failing everywhere, and at nobody’s peril more than our own,” Kate said. “If we pass any single tipping point beyond all mitigating strategies, we’ll never again have the bountiful world we once did. When I was a little girl watching TV, I rooted for the Indians, not the cowboys. I never liked Scarlett O’Hara on her big plantation, or Clint Eastwood with his big gun. This legal case isn’t anti-Native. It’s about big business buying whatever it wants, including our own government, and destroying the natural world. Well, guess what? We’re part of that natural world. ”

“Everything was bigger these days, except open space. . . . The greatest gift we can leave this world is the forest and the sea the way we found it, separate and the same, the oldest home of all, older and more beautiful than all the things industrious people pride themselves in building.”

“Men talk about change, how everything must change, how it’s inevitable, and so they bring about change with their own greed, seeing only what they want to see. But do they themselves ever change? These men?”

“The world is not ours to be mastered, only cared for.”

And so much more for those that have a heart of natural world wonderment. To those that don't yet but have an open mind, maybe this will nudge some enlightenment. ( )

Charming story of an old man, a young man, and a cedar canoe.

Keb Wisting, half-Norwegian, half Tlingit, knows he needs to do something to help his grandson, James, after a logging accident crushes the young man's dreams of a professional sports career. But the voyage Keb has planned plots a course directly between a Tlingit business venture, the National Marine Reserve Program, and the wishes of many tribal members who want the same thing Keb wants -- access to their ancient homeland once covered by a now-receding glacier.

There's also a subplot involving a young whale biologist, and the story drags just a bit from all the weight it's being asked to carry, which keeps it from a 5-star rating in my book, but it's a fine read for all of that. ( )

Keb Wisting is the 95-year-old (or thereabouts) protagonist of this outstanding and finely detailed book set in southeast Alaska. He is born of Norwegian and Tlingit parents, raised by his Uncle Austin listening to Native Alaskan stories while living close to the earth, water, and mountains of this beautiful state. Keb has led a full life but is now ready to die. He has lost his beloved wife and three sons and is left with two daughters who don't get along for political reasons. He longs to go out in the woods, lay down in the moss, and die. But when he learns his grandson has been severely injured in a logging accident, he knows he has some more living to do.

Keb has no patience when his grandson enters a deep funk because his promising basketball career is over. He challenges him to help in the building of a cedar dugout canoe in the Tlingit tradition. This leads to fascinating reading that captured my imagination along with the participation of the entire community. The canoe gives James hope for the future and gives Keb a reason to live a little longer. Keb not only helps his family and community focus on something besides their own problems, he is reacquainted with a young woman whose life he saved years ago when she was a child. She is now a marine biologist studying whales who can't overcome her troubled childhood.

The magic of Alaska and the mystical elements of the Tlingit culture can work wonders in the lives of lost souls. An epic journey with some very interesting side characters, a lovable mutt named Steve, and the presence of Raven make this book not only a good story but also a great book. ( )