Customer Reviews

Primal Tears

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Kelpie Wilson has written a truly fascinating story with her first novel. Taking a little-known endangered primate, the bonobo, and weaving it together with environmental and population politics, the breathtaking setting of the Klamath-Siskiyou mountains, and fascinating personalities, Wilson has produced a tale - and an unforgettable character in Sage - that will get under your skin and stay there.

Wilson's storytelling talent really shines in this first novel. The people and places come alive, and the main character will feel like a good friend by the time you finish the book. And you'll finish it fast - she has written a real page-turner full of action and suspense that takes the reader from the wilderness of southwest Oregon to the war-ravaged hills of the Congo and back again.

All along the way, Wilson challenges you to think and to challenge some of your assumptions. In addition to raising some serious issues, she has permeated the book with spirit and hope, particularly in the person of the main character, Sage, whose sweetness is like hope itself.

_Primal Tears_ is highly recommended, entertaining read; I hope this is just the beginning from a very talented writer. And make sure you visit www.bonobo.org to read about the very real struggles of the real bonobos.

Primal Tears is a funny, deep, exciting and-biologically correct-novel springing from an innovative idea: What if efforts to bring back endangered species from the brink are taken another step through a captive breeding program with human surrogate mothers increasing birth rate of the threatened species? Not possible for snail darters or tiger salamanders, but it is not so far flung a concept for bonobo chimps, as close to humans genetically as horses are to donkeys. Sarah Carrigan, author Kelpie Wilson's character in her first novel, Primal Tears, decides to host a bonobo embryo in her womb in just such an ecologically-driven experiment. She got more than she bargained for when the fertilized egg failed to implant, but some left-over bonobo sperm fertilizes one of her eggs. Thus starts the story of Sage, the human-bonobo girl.

Sage draws from both worlds, being extremely agile and strong, smart and curious, but decidedly different from her peers, sporting a slightly protruding brow and a hairy back. When she finally learns the truth about her conception, trouble comes galloping in from the Child Welfare agency, followed by the local Sheriffs and federal agents, fired up by the bible-thumping Kristian Kommand, who call her "Satan's spawn". All hell breaks loose as the family flees to prevent Sage from being taken away. We are along for the ride on Sage's adventures, exploring her early-arriving sexuality, living in the forest with the bears, running from the right-wing crazies and hooking up with "Tree Nation", a group of young tree-sitters determined to keep the chain saws at bay in the old growth forest. She and her teenage friends form an organization to save the bonobos from extinction-a present danger in the real world today.

There are lots of surprises in this fast-moving story, but Kelpie Wilson did her research well, and the story line will resonate not only with environmental activists, but scientists and research biologists. Besides delving into fascinating ideas, it's a fun and exciting story. We learn about the differences in apes and humanoids in their ability to vocalize, and the fact that apes cannot create tears. But we also learn that perhaps we have more in common with other species that we share space with on this blue green planet than we might think at first glance.

What a great book! I loved it. First of all, I found it to be totally enthralling. I finished it the day I started it, even though there were about a thousand things I had planned for the day and needed to get done. The phrase "I couldn't put it down" is a cliche, but in this case literally true. And as I read, I felt drawn deeper and deeper into a primal sense of hope. Not a naive hope, not wishful thinking, but a sense of the immensity of human evolution and the profundity of out interconnectedness with all of life. Thanks, Kelpie. I hope everyone on our dear and endangered Earth reads this book.

Primal Tears is an entertaining, fast paced, and thought-provoking novel. The carefully researched settings let the reader experience very real, adventurous escapades in the beautiful Siskiyou mountains while the philosophical sentiment of the novel is expressed by Sage, the human-animal heroine, on page 176. "Left to herself she vacated the house and emerged into the cool spring air....Glad as she was that family and friends were with her in Seattle, it was good to be alone right now. She had spent two years without any human contact at all. Here she was introduced to new people every day: scientists from John's lab, the people from the Pearl Show who had flown out to meet her, and all the people who worked for Richard: ...So many people and so few bears."

This fictional account of a laboratory accident lets us all take another look at how we got here. Kelpie Wilson has a keen understanding of what motivates people, and her story, while leading us through a fun adventure, also leads us to take a fresh look at our relationship to other life-forms in our world, both now and in the past.

It really made me think.

For my nickel, the best sf shifts the reader's perspective out of the ordinary just enough so that the human condition can be seen more clearly. Kelpie Wilson accomplishes this with gusto and vision in Primal Tears. Other reviewers here have already given synposes, so let me stick with why you should read PRIMAL TEARS: it's provocative, clever, fast-paced and memorable. It changes the way you see yourself and our world. I read it over a summer weekend, and now find I keep thinking back to it, remembering connections made, powerful images, new ways to think about what it means to be the animal that calls itself human. And PRIMAL TEARS' scope is large: it's not simply a book about chimps--it's about all of us. It's graceful, quirky, and satisfying enough to share a bookshelf with Sherri Tepper's THE FAMILY TREE and Keri Hulme's THE BONE PEOPLE. Kelpie Wilson is a rip-roaring storyteller who weaves her narrative threads together in cinematic style. I can't wait for the movie--will someone out there please turn it into one?

Primal Tears takes one to the threshold of believing in the possibility that humankind could feel a kinship with all creatures of the earth, while it exposes the very real disconnect between humans and the natural world that exists in our world today.

The story's heroine, Sage, a hybrid human-bonobo ape is an especially endearing and believable character. She represents more than the mythical hybrids of the past because one can assume that, with today's technology, a like creature could be a real possibility.

Sage's quest to save the endangered wild bonobos is limited by corporate greed, war and ignorance. Like all endangered species, bonobo survival depends on the choices made by humankind to limit population growth and protect natural resources before we, too, become an endangered species.

Kelpie Wilson weaves well-researched fact with fiction into an entertaining and memorable story that leaves one wanting a sequel.

PRIMAL TEARS - Novel by Kelpie Wilson, Frog/NSB '05 rev. micheal sunanda

PT is the most deeply touching ecological fiction thriller I've ever read. Its shocking in some ways about sex, human evolution, fertility, tree saving hippies, science saviors of overpopulation, greed & normal religious fears of primal nature in humans. It peals multi-layers of the characters mind & souls in many conflicts explained from inside out. So we can identify with whoever you choose connecting - African apes threatened with extinction. Reading it exposes a 1/2 ape & 1/2 human hybrid female in `evolution' gone haywire?

It reminds me of Ecotopia - E. Callenbach; Kin of Ata are Waiting for You - D. Bryant; Woman on the Edge of Time' by M. Piercy; Amazon by B.Walker, "& "Fifth Sacred Thing" - Starhawk - all hot dramas with feminist heroines. PT story spans 20 or so years of `Sage' the female fetus growing up into adulthood mostly among humans, with hippy family raising her in a rural commune like community in SW Oregon hilly valley.

Sages mom an x-biology teacher gets an experimental Bonobo ape implant & has a hybrid by mistakes. Then the real struggles begin. There's many political & religious conflicts thru Sages odyssey of growing mature. Kelpie give deep characters of strong women & men along Sages struggle to blend & balance her human needs, spirit & animal instincts. Emotions surge in every scene of reactions exposing mostly secret human passions & goals in cult wars.

Sage runs from humans & rescued by super rich 'Gates like' man in Seattle striving to save Sage for his research. Feminist attitudes, feelings & fears flash in every chapter. Sage become a scientific curiosity, dancing rock music star, & missionary to Congo amid local wars. As she goes to Africa to meet the dwindling Bonobo's in the bush. We read of many men's reactions to her, their aims & control games. Like the heroine in Amazon Sage becomes a hero & pawn to meet, show, help & teach women needing a natural spiritual awakening. Neo-con Christian fear & hatred surface to even kill her.

Kelpie's characters have such vivid depth of values & needs. Its sexually shocking to our civilized puritan morality, like Ophra's radical interviews also do. It raises issues of women & parents having implants, natural birth & bonding that 100s of hippies are experiencing at home parenting. Sages long solo camping in the mountains is graced by her spirit merging with Mother natures majesty Wow!

Many debates & arguments surge in "Primal Tears", like a superich man wants to harvest pheromones from Sage to make a contraceptive to stem the `population bomb' stressing Mother earth. She enjoys living like animal in the wilderness more than the humans stuck in their habits in the cities.

Sage gets to stay in his vast estate with apes in mini habitat she deeply enjoys. Her family, friends & lovers want her to help raise humans awareness for saving & loving animals, protect nature & reduce population for humans survival in ecological disasters now threatening us. Where's Kelpie next book?

I ordered this book because I like Kelpie Wilson's writing for Truthout. When I read it I found myself disappointed; not because of the subject matter but because of the story line. Kelpie has this girl "over the top" and she didn't have to do that; the story would have been more interesting toned down a bit.