The seal wife

Description

A novel of passions both dangerous and generative, The Seal Wife explores the nature of desire and its ability to propel an individual beyond himself and outside convention. Kathryn Harrison brilliantly re-creates the Alaskan frontier during the period of the First World War as she explores with deep understanding the interior landscape of the human psyche—a landscape eerily continuous with the splendor and terror of the frozen frontier and the storms that blow over the earth and its face.

Description

"Set in Alaska in 1915, it tells the story of a young scientist's consuming love for a woman known as the Aleut, a woman who never speaks, who refuses to reveal so much as her name.". "Born and educated in midwestern cities, Bigelow is sent north by the United States government to establish a weather observatory in Anchorage. But what could have prepared him for the loneliness of a railroad town with more than two thousand men and only a handful of women, or for winter nights twenty hours long? And what can protect him from obsession - obsession with a woman who seems in her silence and mystery to possess the power to destroy his life forever, and obsession with the weather kite he invents, a kite he hopes will fly higher than any has ever flown before and will penetrate the secrets of the heavens?"--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

Genres

• Fiction

Links

• Contributor biographical information
• Sample text
• Publisher description
• URL
• URL
• URL

Other Editions

• The seal wife: a novelRandom House2002-01-01
• Seal WifeHarperCollins Publishers Limited2002-01-01
• Seal Wife, TheAudio CassetteBrilliance Audio Unabridged2002-04-29
• The Seal WifeAudio CassetteBrilliance Unabridged Library Edition2002-04-29
• Seal Wife, TheAudio CassetteNova Audio Books2002-06-15
• The Seal WifePaperbackRandom House Trade Paperbacks2003-05-13