Haida Quest

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

For almost 17 years, Lucy Tyla has been living with her unwed mother,
Anna, but a new man in Anna’s life results in Lucy’s being left with
her “stranger” Babsha (Polish for grandmother) Wojtyla on British
Columbia’s Sunshine Coast in the summer of 1987. As Anna had refused
to speak about Lucy’s father, Lucy utilizes the opportunity of being
in her mother’s home community to look for her birth father. Her
search quickly narrows to Tom Haley, a world-famous Haida artist who,
when he knew Anna (in 1970), was just beginning his career.

Contacting the globetrotting Haley is no easy task, and Lucy faces even
greater difficulty convincing him that she is his daughter. But her
Haida grandfather immediately accepts her, and eventually so does her
father. A subplot involves Lucy’s own unwed pregnancy, the result of
her first (and only) act of intercourse that occurred after she
unknowingly drank alcohol-laced drinks prepared by Leo Ciconne, the son
of a local wealthy family. When Leo learns of Lucy’s pregnancy, he
wants her to have an abortion, but she, like her mother, elects to keep
the child.

Characterization is a strong feature of Haida Quest, and Leo in
particular becomes intriguing as he is offered numerous opportunities to
redeem himself. Although Razzell introduces the theme of racism a number
of times, it remains largely undeveloped. Recommended.