Under Nushagak Bluff

by Mia Heavener

Overview

In 1939, everything changes for Anne Girl when outsider John Nelson grounds his sailboat on the shores, into Anne Girl’s skiff, and into her life during a rare storm in the Alaskan fishing village of Nushagak. When Anne Girl and her mother Marulia find their skiff flattened by John’s boat, Anne Girl decides she both hates and wants him. Thus begins a generational saga of strong, stubborn Yup’ik women living in a village that has been divided between the new and the old, the bluff side and the missionary side, the cannery side and the subsistence side.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597098090
Publisher:	Boreal Books
Publication date:	11/12/2019
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	677,707
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Mia Heavener is of Norwegian, Polish, and Yup’ik heritage. Her experience in rural Alaska is both personal and professional. After graduating from MIT with a degree in civil engineering, Mia returned home to design water and wastewater systems in Alaskan Native villages. During the summers, she commercial fishes with her family in Bristol Bay. She believes that everyone should have a good whiff of the tundra at least once in their life, if not twice. She has an MFA from Colorado State University. Her fiction has appeared in Cortland Review and Willow Springs.

http://miaheavener.com/

Mia Heavener is of Norwegian, Polish, and Yup’ik heritage. Her experience in rural Alaska is both personal and professional. After graduating from MIT with a degree in civil engineering, Mia returned home to design water and wastewater systems in Alaskan Native villages. During the summers, she commercial fishes with her family in Bristol Bay. She believes that everyone should have a good whiff of the tundra at least once in their life, if not twice. She has an MFA from Colorado State University. Her fiction has appeared in Cortland Review and Willow Springs.

http://miaheavener.com/

Mia Heavener is of Norwegian, Polish, and Yup’ik heritage. Her experience in rural Alaska is both personal and professional. After graduating from MIT with a degree in civil engineering, Mia returned home to design water and wastewater systems in Alaskan Native villages. During the summers, she commercial fishes with her family in Bristol Bay. She believes that everyone should have a good whiff of the tundra at least once in their life, if not twice. She has an MFA from Colorado State University. Her fiction has appeared in Cortland Review and Willow Springs.

http://miaheavener.com/

Read an Excerpt

Excerpt One

Anne Girl stood up slowly and stretched her back. She nodded toward John, barely taking him in, and picked up the cork end of the net where a salmon was entangled and handed it to him. Then she returned to where she had crouched before and continued to pull out salmon after salmon.

John took the salmon and turned it in his hands. But when he tugged on the line, it slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground, coating itself in a layer of gravel.

Anne Girl glanced up and saw John redden as if caught in a lie. His cheeks and forehead flushed until it seemed that his blond hair would catch fire. Watching him, she saw his story in those colors. She knew before he said anything that he had left Seattle telling everyone that he was going to Alaska to fish the deep waters for salmon or crab or anything that lived beneath the waves. Of course he had read about Bristol Bay and how it was swimming with heads and tails and millions of dollars. Or maybe he thought—because he looked like a Norwegian—that fishing was in his blood. Her stomach sank because she knew she was stuck with him and that it was going to be a while before she would get her skiff back.

Excerpt Two

When the salmon didn’t hit the beach, people panicked. Like a tundra fire, word spread about the lack of fish until even Anne Girl felt the worry settle in her blood, and she began to think about food all the time. The cannery continued to murmur that the salmon were sure to come, yet few people caught enough to even fill their fish racks. Anne Girl lost sleep along with the other villagers and often stood in her skiff, peering over the side to see if she could catch one by the tail. Just one, she thought. Just one more.

Sipping tundra tea and booze, the villagers talked about whether the smelts were going to arrive and who was the latest to shoot a caribou. “Where’s them damn caribou when you need them?” they asked each other. Others wondered out loud if anyone was planning to fish at another bay. “There’s none here, anyway. Who knows what happened to them fish? Go ask Old Paul, he might know,” some said.

It was because Old Paul knew things about the earth that most had forgotten. He knew the weather and the omens better than anyone on the beach, and so when Anne Girl found the strength, she walked to his house with the feather tucked in her qespeq.

Before she knocked, Anne Girl stood in Old Paul’s arctic entry and took in the rich smell of the smoked fish and dried meat. Little light spread itself along the darkened walls of the porch, but she could see the dried strips of caribou and salmon hanging on nails. She thought of her mother flying in the form of a raven and wondered whose turn it would be next. She breathed in deeply, filling her gut, and tapped on the door.

Editorial Reviews

"Under Nushagak Bluff is slight and compelling, portraying its settings well and capturing original voices. Its story of generational inheritances and expectations, fate, and loyalty is filtered through the tough voices of Alaskan women." —Foreword Reviews

"Infused with magical realism and beautifully written, Heavener's evocative debut paints a moody, vivid picture of a Native culture undergoing change." —Joan Curbow

"It’s an intriguing and important window into life among an Indigenous people and beautifully illustrates the push and pull of assimilation in pre-state Alaska." —Kirkus Reviews

"Heavener has gifted readers with a story both dreamy and authentic, a story made of many individual stories and celebrating oral storytelling and the value of stories altogether."—Anchorage Daily News

"[Under Nushagak Bluff] honors on every page a combination of sea, sky, beach, and tundra, along with the returning salmon, the crying gulls, and the ripe berries they bear."—Corinna Cook, Denali Sunrise

"Heavener has brought readers a story both dreamy and authentic, made of many individual stories and celebrating oral storytelling and the value of stories altogether." —Nancy Lord and David James, Anchorage Daily News

"Heavener’s novel asks, precisely how does historic understanding erode? Where does the past, personal and collective, get mis-placed, mis-taken, coded, and ultimately concealed? Heavener explores these questions with care and grace, a deep respect for her characters, and an allegiance to the land. Indeed, the book honors on every page a combination of sea, sky, beach, and tundra, along with the returning salmon, the crying gulls, and the ripe berries they bear.

So it is a particularly fascinating novel to read during the present moment that is saturated with a global pandemic’s fear and suffering, and also its vigilance, round-the-clock innovation, and far-reaching kindness." —Corrina Cook, Ph.D., Anchorage Press

From the Publisher

11/01/2019

DEBUT Heavener offers up a tale of Yup'ik women living in mid-20th-century Alaska who face a myriad of challenges including interpersonal relationships, a changing economy, and the day-to-day needs of food and shelter in the harsh Arctic climate. The main character is Anne Girl, who falls in love with an outsider, John Nelson. They start a life together in the Alaskan village of Nushagak, where Anne Girl continues traditional fishing and John flies his own airplane to deliver goods and people to other villages. As the years pass, the emotional distance between Anne Girl and John grows, with Anne living alone while John raises their daughter, Ellen. The local cannery brings economic and social change to the village, and many of the traditional ways are forgotten. Ellen remembers the old ways but is caught up in the worldly life of the cannery workers and eventually has a daughter of her own, whom she will teach the traditions and stories of the Native peoples. VERDICT The story will appeal to readers who enjoy regional novels and tales of strong women.—Patricia Ann Owens, formerly at Illinois Eastern Community College, Mt. Carmel

Library Journal

2019-09-02
Each summer during the 1930s and '40s, men from Japan, the Philippines, Russia, Scandinavia, and Washington state flocked to the Yup'ik hamlet of Nushagak Village in Alaska's Bristol Bay to work in local canneries.

For well-trained fisherperson Anne Girl and her mother, Marulia, both Native Alaskans, the arrival of a blond-haired, blue-eyed Norwegian named John Nelson sets the wheels of profound change into motion. Teenage Anne Girl starts seeing John in secret, but eventually the liaison becomes public. Disapproving Marulia wants to know if John is "good for anything" since he seems ill-suited for both sea and factory life. Even more concerning, Marulia worries that John may be an undercover missionary since he's staying with Frederik and Nora Killweather, Christian evangelists eager to bring the populace to Christ. But Anne Girl doesn't care. John is an ace storyteller, and she finds his intricate tales enchanting. Soon, the two marry and have a child. Throughout, Anne Girl continues to fish and teaches her daughter everything she knows about preparing nets, catching salmon, readying a boat to set sail, and reading tides and weather patterns. John, meanwhile, learns to fly and becomes the area's sole pilot, ferrying food, medicine, mail, and sundries between the remote village and the large trading post in Dillingham. It's an intriguing and important window into life among an Indigenous people and beautifully illustrates the push and pull of assimilation in pre-state Alaska. At the same time, since the action begins in 1939 and continues into the late 1940s, the narrative's omission of World War II seems odd. Still, the depiction of the customs and oral traditions of the community make this a fascinating coming-of-age story, touching upon sexuality, gender, death, friendship, alcoholism, and the inevitability of cultural shifts.

A compelling, lyrical, and resonant debut.

Kirkus Reviews