About this item
Luke knows his Inupiaq name is full of sounds white people can t say. He knows he ll have to leave it behind when he and his brothers are sent to boarding school hundreds of miles from their Arctic village. At Sacred Heart School things are different. Instead of family, there are
About the Author
My name is Debby and I am a writer. I write stories for young people. If you haven't seen me, it's because I live far far away and do, indeed, write from the top of the world: Barrow, Alaska, to be exact, the northernmost community on the North American Continent. I've lived here pretty much all of my adult life - thirty years (don't do the math!) and this place and its people have shaped who I am as a writer. My husband is Inupiaq (Eskimo) and most of the stories I write are set within this cultural context. It is not the culture I was born into but it is the one I belong to, the one that has become home to me as a human being and as an artist. As we all do, I write what I know, and through knowing it in my own way, make it my own, something both very old and very new at the same time. Like many other writers, I straddle the distinct and sometimes divergent traditions that make me who I am. Why do I write? I write to make sense of the world. I write to communicate, in the best way I can, my own unique vision. Everybody has a vision that is theirs alone. Mine has been molded by living with the Iñupiat, the Real People of the Arctic, from whom I have learned much and am still learning. Theirs is a spirit as strong and beautiful as the Arctic itself and, as a writer, I seek always to share this spirit with my readers.
