Six Degrees of Separation: Wolfe Island by Lucy Treloar

 

6 Degrees of Separation is a book meme hosted by Books Are My Favorite and Best on the first Saturday of each month. Here’s how it works:

Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge.

A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the ones next to them in the chain.

 

#6Degrees

The Story

Kitty Hawke, the last inhabitant of a dying island sinking into the wind-lashed Chesapeake Bay, has resigned herself to annihilation…

Until one night her granddaughter blows ashore in the midst of a storm, desperate, begging for sanctuary. For years, Kitty has kept herself to herself – with only the company of her wolfdog, Girl – unconcerned by the world outside, or perhaps avoiding its worst excesses. But blood cannot be turned away in times like these. And when trouble comes following her granddaughter, no one is more surprised than Kitty to find she will fight to save her as fiercely as her name suggests…

A richly imagined and mythic parable of home and kin that cements Lucy Treloar’s place as one of our most acclaimed novelists.

My Thoughts

This has already jangled some pet peeve nerves. “Kitty Hawke”? Seriously?? Stupid names put me off almost instantly. And Aussie writing a story set in Chesapapeke Baby Has she lived there? I couldn’t find anything that said she had. Is her husband/partner from there? Ditto. Hmmmmm

 

My Chain

I skipped the obvious pull towards Wright Brothers’ books and toward wolf books. Nothing wrong with the Wright Brothers of wolves.

 

I hated this book, but the Buddhist nun character sounded as out-there as Ms. Hawk in the Wolfe Island book, only weirder. Her great-granddaughter seeks a sort of sanctuary from the bullying at school. A Hello Kitty lunchbox full of mementos pulls another character back to the past. This book is odd, but it was the first that “clicked” in my thinking of a chain. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.

Another odd unusual person made eccentric and isolated by her circumstances apparently, [I haven’t yet read it] is the main character in the Persephone book Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd. The war-time Britain to which she returns after living so isolated is about as intelligible as HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy would have been. (I’m hoping to buy this one soon for reading in the next Peresphone Read-Athon).

Poor Miss Raskin being washed overboard, combined with the grandchild & great-grandchild seeking sanctuary in the other books brought  The Light Between Oceans: A Novel by M.L. Stedman to mind. It features a reclusive couple who insist upon sanctuary for a baby who washed up from a shipwreck seemingly in answer to their prayers for a child. The put the ethical issues of keeping the child into a special mental compartment and go on with life. The child is safe, loved, and “theirs.” Another isolated couple had their prayers for a child answered differently–with a Snow Child, but that story didn’t really fit here as well. I’m including it just in case anyone has missed it. It’s lovely and wonderful.

 

Next to mind was The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway. It was read aloud to us by my 6th-grade teacher. I remember thinking how utterly alone this poor guy was–possibly my first “mature” thought about a book. That loneliness has always echoed through Hemingway’s writing for me. Here is a lonely man, alone against a fish. No sanctuary for him–not in his mind or soul, until he gets that fish.

 

 

Next to mind was a book about taking to the sea to seek sanctuary. A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea is one young woman’s powerful refugee story, taking her from Syria to Europe the hardest way possible. There were many times when young Doaa would have been safer alone. (These two books came to mind with this one–all 3 are on the same crisis).

 

Escaping the wolves of communism and finding sanctuary 90 miles away is the theme of two books about the same family, as well as the theme of the forthcoming book in the series, by Chanel Cleeton. The first book, Next Year in Havana tells the story of the family’s prepared to leave–the coming to power of Castro, the loss of the father’s companies, the involvement of a daughter with a freedom fighter, etc. The second book, When We Left Cuba, tells of their new life in Miami, and the continued work of one to liberate Cuba. The new book, coming in June is The Last Train to Key West. So, those political wolves being on an island, we could re-christen Cuba as Lobo (Masculine Wolf) Island, bringing us full circle.

 

Bonus:

Kitty Hawk–idiotic name. Here’s the best Wright Brother’s book I’ve read:

The Wright Brothers by the ever-wonderful David McCullogh. It all took flight at Kitty Hawk. My recommended book for the must-read book of 2016.

 

One of the best nature books on wolves by Canada’s fabulous Farey Mowatt, Never Cry Wolf.

 

To participate in 6 Degrees of Separation each month go to the Rules and then on the first Saturday of the month post your link in this list.