Silent Inlet.

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

In telling her poignant and introspective story about the hardships of life on Vancouver Island and in the neighbouring islands, Joanna Streetly uses the points of view of four main characters to alternately depict the events and circumstances that mutually affect their lives. Leisurely paced but gripping, Silent Inlet is a revealing account of First Nations life, systemic prejudice, spousal abuse, drugs and alcohol, dysfunctional families, and communication breakdowns between family members. There are regrets over long-lost parents. There is also the suspense of whether the First Nations protagonist, Big Mack, will be convicted of a crime against a retarded nephew, Boy, based upon the testimony of one of the white female characters, Hannah, a nurse recently returned to the community but harbouring a secret of her own after five years away from her reclusive mother, Silent Inlet, and the Fortune Island home where she was born. While Big Mack, Hannah, and her mother, Harriet, are three of the four centres for the story, the fourth is 10-year-old Lonny, another of Mack’s nephews, a sensitive, lonely child with a father jailed for accidentally killing his mother and a view of himself in a mirror as, “A runt. A skinny ugly runt. No wonder nobody loves him.”

With realistic dialogue and credible characters, Streetly develops her story into an intrigue of dramatic proportions about each individual’s outlook on life. At times, lives move at a contented pace enveloped in the sensuous language of the descriptions of minor pleasures like meals and hot baths. At other times, seas roil and storms burst with unleashed fury, and in a particularly chilling conclusion young Lonny must prove his manhood in managing a stolen boat he can barely manoeuvre during a storm that threatens his life. And like Lonny, each of the adults must also deal with their demons of misunderstanding, emotional upset, lost relatives and friends—even drugs, alcohol, and abusive relationships.

Streetly’s novel is recommended reading for the style and substance of its story and its penetrating portrayal of the human condition in specific circumstances.