Raven's Orca — Dan H. McLachlan

There are innumerable tales of why people have immigrated to take up residence in Australia. This novel, written at a Flinders University marine research station located on the remote island of Waldegrave in the Australian Bight, tells the author's story. It is the story of how a patriarchal orca whale and its companion raven followed ancestral migration routes from Alaska to southern Puget Sound and altered his tumultuous life. It's his tale, as recognized by the Haida natives of the Inside Passage, of the orca and raven's powers that govern violence and justice, truth and reality, and how those powers came to bear on him the moment they entered the small saltwater cove in front of his cabin. His receptiveness to their influence was a direct result of a shark attack he suffered, and which he describes vividly, while on assignment in Fiji just before the orca's appearance.