People of the Whale: A Novel

Summary

Raised in a small Native American village by the sea, Thomas Witka Just has just married his childhood sweetheart when an ill-fated decision to fight in Vietnam changes his life forever. Cut off from his community and traumatized by war, he finds refuge in another tribal village there and fathers a child with another woman. When he returns home many years later, he finds his tribe in conflict over a decision to hunt a whale, a spiritual symbol for his people. Torn by guilt, yet desperate to return to a life of authenticity, Thomas realizes he must reconcile his two existences if he is to help heal his equally fractured community. With a keen sense of the sacredness of nature and the trauma of war, People of the Whale is a compassionate novel about the painful moral choices humans make and how the lost soul of a man or a people is restored.