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Flight of the Goose is an award-winning novel about an indigenous woman shaman, a draft-dodging bird scientist, and a young Inupiaq hunter caught between traditions. Their tale, woven from threads of psychological thriller, love story, eco-fiction, science and the metaphysical, is set in a remote village and the wilds of the Alaskan Arctic in a time of great cultural and ecological upheaval. "The story took my breath away. I wept my way through it, identifying profoundly with both protagonists. (Thomas) has a fine grasp of the complexity of human relations and culture in such a village. She also writes beautifully. A remarkable book altogether." Jean L. Briggs, Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, Memorial University of Newfoundland and author of Never in Anger "Memorable...One of the best novels of Alaska that I have read. With the author's unerring knowledge of anthropology and social and environmental issues, it could fit any rural Alaskan village." Dorothy Jean Ray, author of A Legacy of Arctic Art, and The Eskimos of Bering Strait 1650-1898 1971, the Alaskan Arctic. "It was a time when much was hidden, before outsiders came on bended knee to learn from the elders. Outsiders came, but it was not to learn from us; it was to change us. There was a war and a university, an oil company and a small village, all run by men. There was a young man who hunted geese to feed his family and another who studied geese to save them. And there was a young woman who flew into the world of spirits to save herself..."So relates Kayuqtuq Ugungoraseok, "the red fox". An orphan traumatized by her past, she seeks respect in her traditional Inupiat village through the outlawed path of shamanism. Her plan leads to tragedy when she interferes with scientist Leif Trygvesen, who has come to research the effects of oil spills on salt marshes - and evade the draft. Told from both Kayuqtuq's and Leif's perspectives, Flight of the Gooseis a tale of cultural conflict, spiritual awakening, redemption and love in a time when things were - to use the phrase of an old arctic shaman - "no longer familiar". Flight of the Goose is recommended in Cultural Survival Quarterly, Shaman's Drum Journal, First Alaskans Magazine, Tundra Drums, Seattle Post Intelligencer and Sacred Hoop Magazine. It has been studied at North Slope School District, University of Washington, University of Alaska, Boston University, Sterling College, by Sandra Ingerman at Medicine for the Earth - and is read by book clubs worldwide.Flight of the Goose won first place in several literary contests. See more at www.flightofthegoose.strikingly.com… (more)
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“Let me tell a story to cast light on the dark world and the darkening heart….There was a young man [Willy] who hunted geese to feed his family and another [Leif] who studied geese to save them. There was a young woman [Kayuqtuq] who flew into the world of the spirits to save herself.”
Masterful evocation laying down not only the ominous tone permeating the novel, set on the Gyulnyev Peninsula in the town of Itiak, Alaska, circa 1971, but also a bare-bones summary of a peculiar arctic love triangle as well. The narrative alternates between the perspectives of Kayuqtuq, a deeply wounded young native Alaskan woman orphaned and exploited as a child, an angutkoq (shaman) in secret training, and the naluagmiu (mildly pejorative Bering Strait Inupiaq term for “Caucasian”) biologist, Leif, nicknamed “birdman,” up from the lower 48 to study the effect of oil spills on the migratory habits of geese; in particular, the ever elusive and endangered species of geese, the Tallin.
The bleak descriptions of the Alaskan arctic are as simultaneously sweeping and intricate in detail as that sought after flock of geese. It’s a dreary, depressing landscape, even in summer when the sun never sets. The stark settings mirror the oppressed moods and lives of our main protagonists. Kayuqtuq (or, “Gretchen,” her naluagmiu name), is hard to like at first. Not until past page 200 when the specificity of her past injuries are revealed, do I truly sympathize and feel for her. Not until she sees past her bitterness and opens up to and stops toying with the birdman (whom she secretly loves but who’s got his own dark baggage as well which hinders their blossoming romance) and removes her Eskimo-outlawed, secret angutkoq mask – the only means she’s found of empowering herself besides her sullenness -- can the reader empathize with her. Sure, we feel bad that she’s an orphan, like we feel bad that Oliver Twist or David Copperfield are orphans; and we feel even worse witnessing her treated as an outcast in Inupiaq society because she’s more inland-Indian than coastal-Eskimo, but, good Lord, she’s built such enormous bitter walls so icy-iglooish-thick that it’s mighty hard mustering up compassion for her. Not liking Kayuqtuq made the book difficult to read for me. Anti-heroes are one thing, Leona Helmsley-types, another. After all, the book is already darn difficult to read as we flip back-and-forth between the text and the Inupiaq dictionary that Thomas, thankfully, has provided at the rear. Yes, Kayuqtuq ultimately redeems herself after some pretty heinous, though understandable, actions against both Willy and Leif (understandable in that victims so often become victimizers themselves, acting out their grief and rage on innocent bystanders they’ve bonded with who receive the misdirected vengeance truly meant for their now, out-of-the-picture, spiteful perpetrators), but she remains so emotionally detached (granted, if we're to believe Kayuqtuq, Eskimos, unlike naluagmiu, do not wear their hearts on their sleeves, and believe that doing so is both shameful and a sure sign of weakness) from the consequences of her decisions, rationalizing them into the spirit world, that I, naluagmiu critic that I am, cannot identify nor relate to her enough to bridge this unfortunate cultural divide.
Flight Of The Goose is more character study than story; it’s elevated psychological fiction (or we could also rightly call it, elevated psychopathological fiction – it’s that psychiatrically astute), full of shamanistic dysfunction, intergenerational and relational dysfunction, self-defeating behavior, cross cultural nuance and complexity of the kind made famous by Melville.
That, though I tended to nod off during some of the ups and downs of romance passages, I did chuckle at an innovative, shamanistic inclusion of a bear spirit in one such scene. Also, at times the story seemed a bit drawn out, but not so much that I skimmed over portions.