Spirit of the Raven — Bob Cherry

The story begins in the Alaskan bush in November when one of the main characters, Hjalmar the Finn, spies what looks like an axe handle frozen into a mound of ice. He moves closer, only to see a wool Mackinaw coat beneath a fresh skiff of snow. Half the double-bitted axehead is buried between the shoulder blades of the body lying on the ice. Already fairly certain whose body it is, Finn struggles to dislodge the axe head to turn the body on its back to make sure. And indeed, the body is that of his trapping partner, Swede. Thus begins a story in which the characters are as mysterious and compelling as Alaska itself, each with his or her own story of how they came to live in the lonely isolation of the Alaskan bush. There is the pregnant young girl who refuses to name the identity of the father of her unborn child. There is the priest who is pursued by his own demons. There is the pompous man of the law who wields his power inappropriately. And there is the sweet but simpering town drunk, who through the haze of whiskey, still manages to be a source of comfort to many. Although some of the characters are victimised and defeated, they are never destroyed. Engulfing the novel and its characters is a central narrative force surrounding the evasive and enigmatic Native Alaskan named Keetuk, feared and revered by all those living near the Chiktok River. It is through the spirit of the Raven, a mythological trickster believed by many to have created the world, some characters are spared the wrath of Keetuk. The plot is a uniquely structured fabric and a distillation of the way things were and are in Alaska, with all its incredibly diverse cultural, geographic, and historical influences.