WHITE HEAT

The arctic is in my soul.  The decade and more I have spent in the Arctic and the sub-arctic have branded me.   The tundra, the frozen rivers, the aurora, the arctic wind, bush planes, the arctic people – these memories are stored in some recess of my mind, and on dark, cold winter nights when the wind is howling outside our cabin, places and faces come back to me.

This is probably why I am drawn to Arctic stories.   I am presently reading White Heat by M. J. McGrath.  

Eddie Kiglatuk is the best, and only woman guide on Ellesmere Island, A Canadian outpost off the northern coast of Greenland.    Like everyone else in the village she struggles with alcoholism.  When one of her clients is killed on a hunt, she is held responsible by the village elders. 

This story is an accurate view of a remote Native village: close family allegiances, village politics, distrust of outsiders and the social dysfunction caused by alcoholism – along with a page turner Arctic mystery.
 

“To the Inuit, eating human flesh was merely a survival tool of last resort.”

If that doesn’t grab your interest…

the Ol’Bizzard

HOCUS POCUS

Casey was not afraid of ghost.  But, every night when she walked home she had to pass the City Cemetery and the thought of all those hundreds of putrefying bodies buried just a few feet away creeped her out.

Can a child die from fright, from his own…imagination?

‘Johnny, there is no monster under the bed.  I just looked.’

‘Yes, but Dad, he isn’t there until you leave!’

Molly is blind.   Her parents don’t believe her when she says that for the past two nights there has been tapping at her window and a voice whispers ‘Please let me in.’    Her mom says it is just wind and rain; but Molly doesn’t think so.   Tonight she will leave the window open.

How hungry do you have to be to eat the flesh of another human being?  Some might call it cannibalism, but I call it survival.
 

I knew grandma was dead when I opened the front door, but I still called her name as I climbed the stairs.  Outside her bedroom door I hesitated; I put my hand on the knob, but couldn’t turn it: that smell

Three days till Halloween
the Ol'Buzzard

use it you want.  You are welcome.O'B