Jimmy Bluefeather
Winner, National Outdoor Book Award
"Part quest, part rebirth, Heacox's debut novel spins a story of Alaska's Tlingit people and the land, an old man dying, and a young man learning to live."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A splendid, unique gem of a novel."
—Library Journal (starred review)
"Heacox does a superb job of transcending his characters’ unique geography to create a heartwarming, all-American story."
—Booklist
"What makes this story so appealing is the character Old Keb. He is as finely wrought and memorable as any character in contemporary literature and energizes the tale with a humor and warmth that will keep you reading well into the night."
—National Outdoor Book Awards
Old Keb Wisting is somewhere around ninety-five years old (he lost count awhile ago) and in constant pain and thinks he wants to die. He also thinks he thinks too much. Part Norwegian and part Tlingit Native (“with some Filipino and Portuguese thrown in”), he’s the last living canoe carver in the village of Jinkaat, in Southeast Alaska.
When his grandson, James, a promising basketball player, ruins his leg in a logging accident and tells his grandpa that he has nothing left to live for, Old Keb comes alive and finishes his last canoe, with help from his grandson. Together (with a few friends and a crazy but likeable dog named Steve) they embark on a great canoe journey. Suddenly all of Old Keb’s senses come into play, so clever and wise in how he reads the currents, tides, and storms. Nobody can find him. He and the others paddle deep into wild Alaska, but mostly into the human heart, in a story of adventure, love, and reconciliation. With its rogue’s gallery of colorful, endearing, small-town characters, this book stands as a wonderful blend of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and John Nichols’s The Milagro Beanfield War, with dashes of John Steinbeck thrown in.
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Book details
- Author
- Kim Heacox
- Imprint
- Alaska Northwest Books, an imprint of Turner Publishing Company
- Published
- Pages
- 278
- Formats
- Paperback, Hardcover
- Ages
- 13-101
- Subjects
- Fiction › Coming of Age
Fiction › Indigenous
Fiction › Family Life - Topics
- coming of age · Tlingit people · Alaska · indigenous fiction · family life · nature and wilderness · intergenerational bonds · cultural heritage
- ISBN-13
- 9781943328710 (Paperback)9781513260808 (Hardcover)
About the author
KIM HEACOX is a former ranger with the US National Park Service and the author of The Only Kayak, Jimmy Bluefeather and In Denali.
Both The Only Kayak and Jimmy Bluefeather won the National Outdoor Book Award. Heacox’s In Denali received the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award. He also writes opinion pieces for The Guardian on the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and threats to US public lands.
When he’s not writing, Heacox plays music and practices photography. These passions for the natural world run through his books and essays in celebration and defense of it.
Kim lives on eighteen acres in Gustavus, Alaska, next to Glacier Bay National Park, with his wife Melanie.