Sounding the Blood

Lori A. Dunn is an ESL teacher, instructional designer, and freelance
writer in New Westminster, B.C.

The setting of this haunting, enigmatic, and multidimensional novel is a
1915 whaling station in the Queen Charlotte Islands. The station’s
inhabitants are separated by role and nationality, with the agile
Japanese cutting and slicing the whale flesh, the Chinese rendering the
blubber in huge boiling vats, and the Newfoundlander, Leo Slaney,
managing the whole crew. Five distinct voices share their perceptions,
pain, and visions. Slaney describes his difficulties with the station
and his passion for his emotionally distant wife. Nora Slaney, the
distressed young wife and mother, dreams of and grieves for her past
life. Lee Sun articulates the Chinese point of view, his dreams of Gold
Mountain lost in the stench of the rendering vats. Kazuo Yamamoto, deft
with the long knives of his trade, yearns to rejoin his wife in Japan.
Among the other residents of the isolated community are Jake, the
longtime denizen who knows the lore of the area, and the various
children of the Slaneys and the Japanese foreman.

Hale adeptly juggles the multiple points of view while powerfully
evoking the foul reality of the place: the blood and grease and
ever-present stench of the whale carcasses. Sounding the Blood is an
unusual and intriguing look at a neglected part of our history.