Sightings: The Gray Whales' Mysterious Journey

On a Pacific odyssey from Mexico to Alaska in pursuit of the mysterious gray whale, Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson create a vivid tapestry of poignant stories and plainspoken science. Their two voices, that of an award-winning Native American writer and an acclaimed novelist, essayist, and naturalist, interweave the diverse strands of legend and lore, science and symbolism, wonder and controversy inspired by gray whales, which migrate 10,000 miles each year and have twice been hunted to the brink of extinction. The authors also address the three-way collision between the whales and their countless champions, the curtailed but still destructive whaling industry, and the tribal whaling rights of Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest who have resumed their traditional hunt. Sightings is a lyrical celebration of our eternally elusive yet irresistible kinship with the strange and surprising gray whale. “Linda Hogan carries the voice of the deep past and a reexamined future. Her writing is evocative, true, and dangerous because she is not afraid to name evil and identify beauty.”—Terry Tempest Williams