Keri

Darleen R. Golke is a high-school teacher-librarian in Winnipeg,
Manitoba.

Thirteen-year old Keri is angry that her dad had to sell his fishing
boat and find another job. “Boats are precious,” insists Keri, who
refuses to accept the fact that “there aren’t any fish any more.”
Keri escapes from daily reality by weaving fantasies around her late
Gran’s story of an abandoned young girl and a beached whale “fetched
up on the shore” at Riley’s Cove in 1762. When Keri and her brother
Grae spend their Sunday exploring the cove, they find a beached whale
and work together in vain to

save it. The whale and the young girl become merged in Keri’s
imagination, and she is able to accept not only the reality of the
whale’s death but also the loss of her family’s traditional way

of life.

Keri is a sensitive and evocative story of loss and the need to accept
the inevitability of change. Particularly poignant are Jan Andrews’s
descriptions of Keri’s and Grae’s efforts to save the whale.
Recommended.