Solar Storms [Paperback]

Linda Hogan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 26, 1997

Searching for her birth mother, 17-year-old Angela finds her way to the remote region of the Boundary Waters between Canada and Minnesota. Here she reunites with the woman who raised her during her early years. But her happiness is short-lived, when she gets involved in a conflict with developers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her luminous, quietly compelling second novel, Hogan, a Chickasaw poet and writer (whose first novel, Mean Spirit, was a finalist for the Pulitzer), ties a young woman's coming-of-age to the fate of the natural world she comes to inhabit. Angela Jensen, a troubled 17-year-old, narrates the tale of her return to Adam's Rib, an island town in the boundary waters between Minnesota and Canada. Tucked into a pristine landscape of countless islands, wild animals and desperately harsh winters, it's her Native American family's homeland. As a child, Angela was abandoned by her mother, Hannah Wing, but not before Hannah had permanently scarred half of Angela's face; earlier, Hannah herself had been separated from her family and unspeakably abused. In Adam's Rib, Angela is reunited with her great-grandmother, Agnes Iron, and Agnes's mother, Dora-Rouge; she also spends a winter with Bush, a solitary woman who briefly raised her and, years earlier and also briefly, raised Hannah. Just as Angela discovers through her family's elemental way of life her own blood ties to the land, the threat of a huge hydroelectric dam project ruins her idyll. The four women?Angela, Agnes, Dora-Rouge and Bush?embark on a dangerous journey far northward to visit the homeland, where Hannah Wing is known to live. Hogan's finely tuned descriptions of the land and its spiritual significance draw a parallel between the ravages suffered by the environment and those suffered by Angela's mother. And, as the land is transformed, so are the lives of the characters, often in deeply resonant ways.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Chickasaw novelist and poet Hogan has numerous books to her credit, including the award-winning Mean Spirit (LJ 11/1/90). She has certainly influenced newcomers W.S. Penn (The Absence of Angels, LJ 1/94) and Betty Louise Bell (Faces in the Moon, LJ 3/1/94). Rich in spirituality, language, landscape, emotion, myth, and healing, this new work unfolds to reveal four Native American women intent on saving sacred areas from the construction of a hydroelectric dam. The central quest belongs to Angela, a young woman seeking to explain her mother's history of child abuse. While answers elude her, like precious medicinal plants quickly inundated, Angela still discovers herself and her heritage. Sadly, the most dangerous creatures the women encounter in the remote lands near Canada are other humans. Recommended for most collections.?Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of Oregon, Eugene
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (February 26, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684825392
• ISBN-13: 978-0684825397
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,765 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful prose, compelling vision, October 20, 2000

By 

James Stripes - See all my reviews

This review is from: Solar Storms (Paperback)

_Solar Storms_ is a powerful novel that should appeal to anyone concerned with issues relating to the environment, Indians, community activism, abuse, feminism, or cultural politics. Its fine writing offers even stronger drawing power.

The story is set 1972-1974 within a Native community threatened with destruction by the kind of economic development that marginalizes and exploits the north country to benefit other communities in the south. It is told from the point of view of one of the central characters. Angel is 17 when she returns home, trying to get a sense of her past and the origin of the scars that disfigure her face. Her quest for identity and information quickly broadens into larger, and more substantial concerns for the people of Adam's Rib. As she finds her place there, she gains perspective leading to commitments that reveal her developing inner strength. She learns that her individual identity finds its best expression in terms of her relationships within a community that encompasses other people, land and water, and all life.

Through the development of Angel's perspective, and the ideas and actions of the women who become her mentors, author Linda Hogan puts forth an astoundingly powerful vision of the relationships among humans and the natural world that sustain life. She does this with a richly detailed text that even readers who may not share Hogan's perspective will find the book enjoyable and provocative.

Hogan's _Solar Storms_ offers a reminder that the best stories are critical to human life not only for the pleasure of the text, but because they motivate ethical life. _Solar Storms_ merits recognition as a modern classic of American literature.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing use of the English language, May 12, 2000

By 

Lisa Blum - See all my reviews

This review is from: Solar Storms (Paperback)

One thing I like about book clubs is that they force people to read books they might not have otherwise read. When my book club chose Solar Storms, I was not overly enthusiastic. However, Hogan's writing captured me from the first page. I could feel the cold of the frozen Great Lakes, smell the stuffiness of hut, taste the native dishes, agonize with the family's loss. Then, when Angel returns to her grandmothers' home and begins her healing process, I could feel the story line start to vibrate in me like violin strings.

Like some of America's greatest prose, the content of this book was not as important to me as the style, although I thought the storyline was thought-provoking. No one memorizes Lincoln's Gettysburg Address because of the message. They memorize it because it is such a beautiful example of what our language can sound like in the hands of a master. Hogan is a master.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Deeply-Moving Portrayal of Women and their Land, October 12, 1999

By 

Margaret T. Moulton ([e-mail]) (Blue Hill Falls, Maine) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Solar Storms (Paperback)

I marvel at the intricate and deeply authentic way in which Linda Hogan exposes the emotional center of her characters... as well as the manner in which she reveals how they experience their external environment... with its vast riches of light and life and shifting storms... of turning seasons, of companies of birds and fish... of forests and water... all as an aspect of what is occurring in their inner lives. They seem to breathe in the land, to drink of the rich wellspring of fullness and diversity present in 'all their relations...' and to sense with clear awareness and slow contemplative abosrption the re-rooting of the natural world within their own souls. The "potlatch" which served as the story's prologue is one of the most poignant pieces of literary excellence I have ever read.