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by Karen Polinsky
by Karen Polinsky
Spanning the latter half of the nineteenth century, this coming-of-age novel unfolds in the form of a historian’s notebook. Protagonist and narrator Millie Langlie (daughter of a S’Klallam maiden and a Norwegian mariner) is an adventurous girl with a curious mind. Guided by the gift of a pair of silver fish earrings, she unearths an anomalous Indian-on-Indian massacre and confronts her mother’s secret love affair. Journeying from the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Port Townsend and back again, Millie discovers how knowledge of the past can teach us to love, forgive, and forge a new path.
” . . . the writer has created an overall unity combining truth, human frailty and strength, and philosophical depth. She has taken Mary Ann Lambert’s knowledge and understanding to create a multi-dimensional picture of a place, a time and a mingling of people . . . The novel’s strength is its sensory detail as noted by a child of nature. It’s a book to be read word-by-word to savor its full depth and meaning.” — Review, Historical Novel Society
“Dungeness is a remarkable work. Karen Polinsky weaves a rich tapestry of fact and fiction, sprinkled with Northwest native art, language, and historical images, about the churning cultural changes of the Olympic Peninsula in the 1870s, seen through a young native girl’s experiences. But even more than this, Polinsky imbues her narrative with a deep and captivating sense of mystery. A wonderful work; deserves to be reprinted and spread broadly.” — Joe Upton, Alaska Blues: A Story of Freedom, Risk and Living Your Dream
Details
Details
Bink Books
280 pp. ● 5.5×8.5
$14.95 (pb) ● $8.99 (eb)
ISBN 978-1-945805-18-9 (pb)
FICTION
Publication date: July 2017
Karen Polinsky is a high school English teacher and writer from Bainbridge Island, Washington. Twenty years ago she drove to the Pacific Northwest from Boston with her three children in a beat-up Toyota station wagon. Not long after, she encountered the nineteenth century S’Klallam historian Mary Ann Lambert in a book of primary documents gifted to her by the director of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Cultural Resources. Her fascination with Lambert, a woman-of-vision, eventually turned into, Dungeness, a revisionist-history coming-of-age novel inspired by her life. Also a playwright, she has had a half-dozen one-acts produced on Bainbridge Island and in Seattle, and has written scripts for two short films. Polinsky was recognized with the Patsy Collins Award for Environmental Educators in 2012.
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