Island Between by Margret E. Murie (review)

Reviews Island Between. By Margaret E. Murie. Illustrated by Olaus J. Murie. (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1977. 228 pages, $9.95.) The documentary novel, like jazz and modem dance, is an American contribution to art which reached its full development in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. And now here is another, not as dramatic but certainly more worthwhile. Margaret E. Murie has blended archeological investigations to create a timeless leader-hero in her recent novel Island Between, the island being the St. Lawrence (Sevuokuk in Eskimo) between Alaska and the U.S.S.R. in the Bering Sea. The prince figure, Toozak, is shaped- by ice, snow, sunshine and the very exacting rules of the Eskimo society. The son of a leader of the Eskimo island community, Toozak and cast lived at the time of the arrival of the first white men (Russians) in the Arctic, an event from which they suffered cultural upheaval and tragedy. Mrs. Murie’s documentary material is from the 1926 notes of Dr. Charles E. Bunnell and field-man Otto Wm. Geist, collaborators in the St. Lawrence archeological investigations of the University of Alaska, as well as from her own poetic observations and accurate knowledge of the natural history of Alaska. Amid bird wings, pounding waves and island quietude Mrs. Murie steers Toozak up the social ladder of his society to top man. His primary antagonist is the climate, a force which becomes a living and moody char­ acter with Mrs. Murie’s handling. The weather is on one hand cruel and insufferable, and on the other brings in the ice floes on which rest walrus and seal, and around which swim the whales; life for the people. Occasionally the Eskimo-like language dominates the writing too much, particularly in the first chapters of the book, but as Toozak and the other characters are developed the writing becomes less stylized and cleaner. The tale begins as Toozak at sixteen kills his first walrus and enters the society of hunters. Painfully he learns to respect their rigid rules, and in doing so becomes more skilled and acquires the fearless initiative of leadership. An adventurous young man, he discovers a cove on the island that is rich with whales and polar bears, a discovery that leads to the 268 Western American Literature establishment of a new village. When he is fully mature and a legendary hunter, Toozak selects a bride, or rather she is selected for him, and works his way through the complex but fascinating rules of courtship to win his wife. The birth of Toozak’s son is a fine piece of writing as is the death of an old person, the mother of the head of another household. In classic Eskimo tradition she asks her son to release her to the spirits when she is terminally ill. Obeying, he carries her outside into the dark and slips a noose over her head. Through a tragic misjudgment Toozak and five other hunters are carried out to sea on an ice floe. He and three others survive to reach land and find their way home two years later. The year is 1878, the year that the Russians arrive in tall sailing vessels and exchange beads, whiskey and guns for baleen and ivory. The Eskimos spend the summer in drunken carousals, an object lesson to Toozak. Food supplies are diminished by the time the winter sets in and when the harshest storm in anyone’s memory sets in for months, starvation strikes. The return of spring does not bring the food-bearing ice floes until almost too late. When they finally do arrive there are not enough men and boys left alive for three whaling crews and Toozak and his father set out for the mainland to recruit people. As Kaka walks with his wife-to-be along a high cliff, the history of the island is repeated before their eyes. Several boats full of people arrive on Sevuokuk as they did in the beginning. Margaret Murie has taken on thirty-three characters, the history of a remarkable people, birds, waves, winds and blizzards, and has turned out a beautiful book infused with her own...