"No one should miss this beautiful legend." --Tony Hillerman
Velma Wallis's award-winning, bestselling novel about two elderly
Native American women who must fend for themselves during a harsh
Alaskan winter
Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for many generations
from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River Valley in Alaska,
this is the suspenseful, shocking, ultimately inspirational tale of two
old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine.
Though these women have been known to complain more than contribute,
they now must either survive on their own or die trying. In simple but
vivid detail, Wallis depicts a landscape and way of life that are at
once merciless and starkly beautiful. In her old women, she has created
two heroines of steely determination whose story of betrayal,
friendship, community, and forgiveness "speaks straight to the heart
with clarity, sweetness, and wisdom" (Ursula K. Le Guin).