About this item
Highlights
- Alaska Native Literature Award Winner The tragic yet triumphant story of a young mother's winter journey to the Bering Sea coast with her two young children.
- 12 Years
- 7.18" x 5.08" Paperback
- 224 Pages
- Biography + Autobiography, Cultural, Ethnic & Regional
Description
Book Synopsis
Alaska Native Literature Award Winner
The tragic yet triumphant story of a young mother's winter journey to the Bering Sea coast with her two young children. This powerful narrative will haunt readers.
Advanced in pregnancy and now newly widowed, Qutuuq sets out with her two children, leaving their camp and following a frozen river to the coast. Homebound, one step at a time, through the subzero wilderness.
This is a chilling, true story dating from 1892. It tells of battles against killing cold, starvation, and exhaustion. It's the story of a haunting decision made in the throes of desperation. And ultimately it's a story of survival and triumph amid unspeakable sorrow.
More than a century later, Qutuuq's story, which has descended through her Inupiat Eskimo family as oral history, is retold in print by her great-granddaughter.
Review Quotes
"The Winter Walk is a survival story set in 1892 near the Norton Sound. Qutuuq, an Inupiaq mother, guides her two children to safety after her husband dies at winter camp. The author's mother Keenaq (Ruth Savok Outwater) told Loretta the story, in spite its darkness, and urged her to write about it. The book is published as an adult memoir; however, it would be appropriate for high school students because of its wealth of information about Inupiaq ways... Beautifully told."