this is an excellent first effort; her writing is good and has a lot of potential to be even better. in places it felt like she was trying too hard or that she wanted to imbue a sentence or paragraph with more meaning than she actually gave it. but that's ok. i can see what she was wanting to do and i think that generally she was successful.

if i had read this when it came out, i know that i'd have liked it even more. today, though, i am sitting with a lot of discomfort about a white woman writing this story. (would it have been published and would i have known about it had it been an aleut woman writing about her history? i don't know, but the chances are small.) but dyson writes about aleut history in such an insider kind of way that i am not comfortable, knowing she isn't aleutian. that said, the story she extrapolated from the histories she read really is fantastic. the way she interpreted the missing pieces leads to quite a story, and one that makes a lot of sense, even if we don't know that it's specifically true. it has this bit of magic, though, that hovers over it, that white people tend to give to native traditions. so i don't know. and as a white person myself, i don't know that i can judge.

so i both really liked this and really wasn't sure at the same time. maybe another part of my discomfort is that the book was told in a back and forth between present day (1986) and history, and the history sections are consistently stronger even as they are the parts that pose the potential issue. i think the further i get from this book the more the discomfort will fade and i'll be left with the powerful story of these aleut women who, through history and generations, took their power in their own hands and used it over and over again to save their community. i will forget all about brandy's story, told in 1986, as i never cared much for those chapters. the real story in this story isn't brandy's; it's the aleut history and the strength of female community. truthfully she could have just told the aleut story and left brandy's out and the book wouldn't have lost much. but then i'd probably be even more uncomfortable with the white writer telling the story of aleutian women. those sections are much stronger, from a story perspective, though.

this is hard to rate because of these dichotomies. i'd probably rate the history chapter 3.5 even as i'm uncomfortable with a white woman telling the story from the aleut point of view, and the brandy chapters no more than a 2. so maybe a 2.75 on average then. ( )

I could have used just a little less about the protagonist and more about the history of the islands and the women she learned about. Still a pretty good and informative read, though. ( )

I could have used just a little less about the protagonist and more about the history of the islands and the women she learned about. Still a pretty good and informative read, though. ( )

I don't even know where to start with this book... It's about a thirty-something woman, Brandy, in the 80s who follows her newest boyfriend to Dutch Harbor, AK (think site of 'Deadliest Catch'). A professional cocktail waitress, she's naturally blond, from a broken home and tries to never think about the future. But then she starts learning more about the history of the Aleut people, especially the women, and begins to discover many dark and compelling truths. Brandy also learns more about herself -- but she goes kicking and screaming the entire way. I have mixed feelings about this powerful story. First, it's pretty crass in parts due to the nature of her lifestyle and the people she hangs with -- but you also learn so much about the Alaskan people/culture. It's so layered like Brandy herself. Beautiful writing but not for everyone. ( )

Brandy is a young woman who drifts through life, moving from man to man, following each wherever he takes her. At the start of this book she has just followed the latest all the way to Dutch, a tiny town on the Aleutian Island of Unalaska. Intertwined with her story is that of several generations of Aleutian women, each sacrificing so that her people may live. The first half of the book is kind of slow, paddling around in shallow waters to thoroughly set the scene. After that it picks up, both the story and its characters gaining depth as Brandy begins her slow transformation at the edge of the world.This is an atmospheric book, in that it involves highly detailed characters with highly detailed backstories living in a highly detailed world, but not a whole lot actually happens. It is not the kind of book that keeps you up at night, dying to read just one more chapter. This is not necessarily a bad thing - this is a good book to curl up with on a quiet afternoon and just let yourself travel to the Aleutians of twenty years ago. ( )