Sounding the Blood

Amanda Hale`s achingly poetic debut novel, set on a 1915 whaling station at the southern tip of Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands), invokes the spirits of five dreamers held hostage to time, place and memory. Drenched in myth and mist, Rose Harbour is home to: Leo Slaney, the Newfoundland boss whose fumbled overtures to repair his marriage mask guilt and repressed desire; Nora, Leo`s distraught wife, winnowed by loss and phantom lovers; Isobel, the Slaneys` rebellious daughter newly awakened to the forbidden love of a Japanese suitor; Lee Sun, a young innocent seduced by the opium and gambling dens of Victoria`s Chinatown; and Yamamoto Kazuo, a wronged outsider yearning to be reunited with his wife and child in Japan. The sixth voice is the voice of the land and of Jake, a station tradesman who outlasts the seasons and sees all. In dream-like prose that takes on the motion of the tides, sweeping from figment to flesh, Hale offers a heady concoction of secrets and longing – a mesmerizing story that rises three generations out of the sea.