The Raven's Gift

✍ Scribed by Don Rearden

• Publisher: Pintail;Penguin Canada
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 156 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

Notable Fiction of 2013 --- *Washington Post*

The Washington Post declares: The Raven's Gift by "master of the cliffhanger" Don Rearden is a blend of "hunter-hunted suspense of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, the post-apocalyptic bleakness of Cormac McCarthy's The Road and the haunting mysteriousness of The X-Files."

John Morgan and his wife can barely contain their excitement upon arriving as the new teachers in a Yup'ik Eskimo village on the windswept Alaskan tundra. But their move proves disastrous when a deadly epidemic strikes and the isolated community descends into total chaos. When outside aid fails to arrive, John's only hope lies in escaping the snow-covered tundra and the hunger of the other survivors--he must make the thousand-mile trek across the Alaskan wilderness for help. He encounters a blind Eskimo girl and an elderly woman who need his protection, and he needs their knowledge of the terrain to survive. The harsh journey pushes him beyond his limits as he discovers a new sense of hope and the possibility of loving again.

From Booklist

This is part dystopian survival tale, part Jack London wilderness saga, and part Stephen King/Michael Crichtonstyle suspense story. Holding it all together, and making this much more than a what happens when people cant defend against a massive threat exercise, is Alaska native Reardens deep knowledge of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and the culture of the Yupik Eskimos living there. Rearden takes an adventurous, idealistic young couple (John and Anna), gives them jobs as first-year teachers, and plunks them in a tiny village in a tiny home free of all amenities. From the start, though, readers will know something is off: Why, in the scene before the couples job interview, are an unidentified man and woman crawling through the snow, looking for signs of life? The narrative consists of three separate time lineswhat happened before almost everyone in the village disappeared; John and Annas first efforts to teach and adjust; and Johns desperate efforts to survive and return to Anna. This narrative mix is deliberately confusing, like following tracks in the snow, and just as engrossing. --Connie Fletcher

Review

"The book is fantastic, one of the best books about Alaska I have ever read. It calls to mind Cormac McCarthy and Stephen King, but at the same time it is all its own. The Raven's Gift is the story of a couple teaching in a remote Alaskan village when a epidemic sweeps through. People are dying in isolation, and others descending into savage violence. It is a survival story and an edge-of-the-seat thriller." -**2013 Pulitzer Finalist, Eowyn Ivey, author of The Snow Child

"The Raven's Gift has a winning plot, characters we've never met before, and intriguing details of a world most of us will never venture to -- creating a read that opens our eyes and finds the fault lines of a heart in one breathless sitting."
-Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of The Tenth Circle and *My Sister's Keeper*

"At first glance, The Raven's Gift might appear to be an epic thriller set in the ancient land of the Yup'ik tundra, but it goes much farther than that into the delicate frontiers of the human heart--the best book I've read this year." -Craig Johnson, author of the *Walt Longmire Mysteries*

"An epic adventure, a work of mythical dimensions, never to be forgotten."
-Daniel Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of *Ishmael and The Story of B*

"A many layered Alaskan intrigue which is gritty and engaging and an absolutely good read . . . all in a world, that Alaskan world --which I could believe."
-Ron Carlson, author of The Speed of Light, Five Skies, News of the World, Plan B for the Middle Class, The Hotel Eden, and At the Jim Bridger.

Library : General
Formats : EPUB
ISBN : 9780143180289