Jimmy Hill's fishing boat is lost at sea, and while his older sister, Lisa, waits for word, her thoughts drift to their childhood in Kitamaat, a small Haisla Canadian Indian community off the coast of British Columbia. Skipping back and forth between the 20-year-old Lisa's anxious vigil and the story of her upbringing, this lyrical first novel by half-Haisla short story writer Robinson (Traplines) sings with honesty. As a child, Lisa is a feisty kid, a fighter. Her heroes are her Uncle Mick, a Native rights activist who teaches her to sing "Fuck the Oppressors," and her grandmother Ma-ma-oo, who instructs her in Haisla ways. Popular culture and tradition go hand in hand in Kitamaat, where a burnt offering to the dead is likely to be a box of Twinkies, and Lisa's sensible, hard-working parents try to give their children the best of both worlds. Jimmy, a straight arrow, shows early promise as a swimmer and trains for the Olympics. Lisa, meanwhile, is thrown off course by the tragic death of Uncle Mick and joins a gang of tough boys in junior high. A few years later, she runs away to Vancouver and a life of drugs and alcohol. Startled at last out of her downward spiral by the spirits that have visited her since she was a little girl, she comes home just in time to watch as her brother's life falls apart and he inexplicably takes a job as a deckhand. Eventually, she sets out alone to meet her parents near the spot where Jimmy's boat was last seen. Lisa is an unsentimental, ferocious, funny and utterly believable protagonist; Robinson's narrative is engrossing but fiercely uncompromising, avoiding easy resolution. Fans of writers like Lois Anne Yamanaka and Sherman Alexie, who blurbs the book, will appreciate this gritty, touching story. Author tour. (Dec. 6) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In Robinson's powerfully evocative debut novel, sky, sea, and shore merge in the rain that falls on the islands of British Columbia, the spirit-filled home of the Haisla. Author of the acclaimed short story collection, Traplines (1996), Robinson, of Haisla and Heiltsuk descent, ponders the interweaving of the increasingly elusive past and the harsh present that shapes the lives of a close yet contentious extended Haisla family. Her 20-year-old narrator, Lisamarie Michelle Hill, outspoken and defiant, was named after her adored Uncle Mick, an Elvis fanatic and Native-rights activist, and has prophetic visions, a gift her pragmatic parents seek to downplay but that her grandmother quietly encourages. Told in flashback as she searches for her possibly drowned brother, Lisa's coming-of-age story is one of coming to terms with loss: loss of the old world before clear-cuts and cars, when the world was "whole" and wildlife abundant; and the loss of loved ones. As Lisa remembers her childhood--which was marked by disaffection from school, confrontations with violence and death, and unnerving communications with the spirit realm--Robinson meaningfully fuses the mystical with the ordinary and the tragic with the piquant. This tale of inheritance and dispossession is a bittersweet liquid dream that invites sustained contemplation. Donna Seaman

Robinson, who is of Haisla and Heiltsuk descent, portrays contemporary Haisla culture from the perspective of Lisa, a young Haisla woman coming of age in Kitamaat, BC. Just as she is recovering from a debilitating depression triggered by a series of deaths in her family, Lisa learns that her brother has disappeared. Before each death, she was visited by a ghost visitations that increased when she approached adolescence and this contact with the spirit world is a metaphorical bridge from old Haisla ways to her contemporary life. Confronted with so much loss, she must struggle to continue living. Yet as she accepts that her brother, too, has died, she comes to recognize that there is still a purpose to her own life. Robinson, who won the Winifred Holtby Prize for her first publication, the story collection Traplines, wanders somewhat in this first novel, but it is full of lore, landscape, familial closeness, and deeply expressed anguish. Highly recommended for all libraries. Rebecca Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Adult/High School-Lisamarie Hill is a Haisla, living on her people's Kitamaat reservation, north of Vancouver, BC. Now 21, she is motoring alone up the Douglas Channel to search for her younger brother, Jimmy, feared lost during his first run as a deckhand on a fishing boat. The narrative flashes back to her childhood. At once a typical young girl and one chosen to carry on the legacy of her forebears, Lisa was an ungovernable spirit who was always in trouble. She felt pulled apart by the desire for acceptance by her peers, and the need to spend her time with her grandmother. Ma-ma-oo taught her of nature's wonders, and of the "old time" when "-Animals and humans could switch shapes, simply by putting on each other's skins-." Lisa heard voices, saw things others didn't, and was visited on moonlit nights by a tiny red-haired figure who perched on her jewelry box. At 16, crushed by her grandmother's illness and eventual suicide, Lisa left school and went to Vancouver and spent her inheritance on drink and drugs. Finally, shocked by news of the suicide of a former boyfriend, she returned to Kitamaat to finish high school. Now, traveling up the channel, Lisa stops at Monkey Beach, where she and Jimmy reestablished their relationship after her return home. There she encounters her brother and grandmother in the watery spirit world, but Lisa is sent back, left alone on the beach. Teens will be fascinated by this artfully told tale. It is sad and funny, and at times shocking, but always real in its portrayal of a young girl growing into womanhood.-Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.