97 Books Like The Earth's Blanket

Snorkeling in a Hawaiian reef took on new dimensions for me in reading this book. Johannes–a noted fisheries biologist–went to Palau in Micronesia to study the breeding biology of tropical reef fishes. There, he came to deeply appreciate the extraordinarily detailed knowledge of the local subsistence fishermen who had contributed to his research. Their expert knowledge of the behavior and breeding cycles of local reef fishes was hard-earned through a lifetime of careful observation in pursuit of their livelihood.

By contrast, the expert knowledge of Johannes and his academic colleagues was broad but shallow. Combining Indigenous and academic expertise enhanced both. We also learn how Palauan communities conserved the resources of their reefs, practices disrupted by colonial administrations.

My first birding trip to the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona caught my fancy. Then I read this book, in which Dr. Nabhan recounts lively details of his encounters with Indigenous communities at home in the Sonoran Desert and learns how they engage with the desert plants and animals in their lives.

Nabhan is an astute observer, an intensely sympathetic storyteller, and a highly knowledgeable student of local natural history. In this book, he visits Tohono O’odham (Papago) friends as they harvest saguaro fruits to make an intoxicating brew to “bring on the rain.” He tells us about fiery wild chilis and bitter wild squashes that Coyote “shat upon.” End notes ground his vivid accounts in the academic literature.

I have shelves full of bird guides to all sorts of places. However, this guide is unique. It is a “bird guide” to the exotic avifauna of highland Papua New Guinea as understood by and in the words of a native.

It honors a decades-long collaboration between the ethnobiologist Bulmer and his Kalam colleague and teacher, Saem Majnep. This began when Bulmer arrived to document the ethnozoological knowledge and ecological practices of this isolated Papuan community. Saem Majnep, then a young boy, eagerly assisted.

The book is a conversation: Saem Majnep describes all the birds of his local habitat, writing in his native language. Bulmer then provides an academic perspective on Saem Majnep’s ethno-ornithology. Here, we have the benefit of a binocular vision of the avian worlds of this little-known corner of our planet.

I first encountered Nelson’s arctic stories in his account of the sea-ice survival techniques he learned as an apprentice to Inuit whalers of Wainwright, Alaska, on the Arctic Ocean shore. I followed his adventures south to the sub-arctic muskeg home of the Koyukon, an Athabaskan people at home on the Koyukon River, a northern tributary of the great Yukon.

His book, Make Prayers to the Raven, is a deep dive into the daily lives and worldview of the Koyukon. Their ancestors survived in the harsh climate of the Arctic Circle for 10,000 years by respecting the power of their animal and plant neighbors, their spiritual kin. Nelson's sensitive storytelling makes the Koyukon voices loud and clear.

In one of the finest pieces of world literature, Robert Bringhurst recounts stories of the Haida mythtellers. The isles of Haida Gwaii are 160 km into the Pacific, drenched in rain, mist, and wind. Here was one of the world's richest traditions of story, place, and nature, where myths thought themselves into people. We have the extraordinary sagas of Raven Travelling, Goose Food, and the Qquana Cycle, some individual oral sagas more than 5,000 lines long. “Wealth has big eyes,” said one storyteller. Raven is the trickster of the North, is ingenious, ever-watchful from high spruce and red cedar. “Bring us good luck,” people called out. Says one, “He always fools everybody, so he gets by easy.” Yet many of the Haida people died on contact with colonial invaders, and the coastal villages and rows of totem house poles stand abandoned.

There’s so much to love about this book: the language, the location, the history, the characters. Anna, a young woman who is creating an exhibit on textiles from 19th-century Interior BC, discovers a box of the personal effects of a woman who lived decades before. Margaret is the daughter of an Aboriginal mother and a settler father. Kishkan recreates the unique beauty of the South Cariboo/Nicola valley landscape as a backdrop to this intricately woven story of family, friendship, love—and train robbers.

I always enjoy a good mystery and R.M. Greenaway’s River of Lies is definitely one I would recommend. This book is the fifth in the B.C. Crime Series of mysteries by Greenaway but it was the first I had read—and it won’t be the last. The two detectives, Cal Dion and David Leith, are strong characters who come together in this book to solve a murder of a young black female janitor, a missing child case, a drowning, and an apparent suicide. Once they find the missing link between all these incidents, they are able to make progress. I found this an absorbing whodunit that held my attention to the very last page.

Jen Sookfong has written a debut novel that held my attention throughout. She describes three generations of a Chinese-Canadian family in Vancouver beginning in 1913 when Chan Seid Quan emigrates to Vancouver at the age of 17. Years later after his death at age 94, his grand-daughter, Samantha, is forced to leave Montreal in order to take care of her mother in Vancouver. She feels resentment until she begins to delve into her family’s past and discovers alienation and hardship. Author Sookfong is an expert on immigration and the fate of many Chinese people. This is a beautiful tale of family conflicts set in Vancouver’s Chinatown.

Laisha Rosnau is a prize-winning poet, and her literary skills shine in this novel about a noble Italian family, the Caetanis, who immigrate from Italy to Vernon, BC to escape the rise of fascism. Based on a true story, this intricate novel explores the bonds of family and friendship, the contrasts in class and changing times, and the hardships and beauties of life in a rural area through the lives of three women. I was captivated by the characters and the gorgeous, insightful writing. Ofelia and Sveva Caetani and their personal secretary, Miss Juul, will stay with you forever as women creating home and family in the face of exile, loss, and sweeping change.

As an historian, I enjoyed Vanessa Winn’s portrayal of Colonial Victoria in The Chief Factor’s Daughter. Hudson Bay Chief Factor, John Work, protects all his daughters with many restrictions on their lives causing his eldest daughter, Margaret, to fear that at age 23 she will never find a suitor and is destined to remain a spinster forever. The author shows a fascinating side of society in 1858 where although Margaret and her sisters belong to the upper class in the fur-trading community, they are also the victims of snobbery and racism because their mother is Metis. Winn’s sequel Trappings continues with the story of Kate Work, another daughter, and both books are a good read for those who love family history.