The Tent Peg
Aritha van Herk
Fiction / Literary
224 pages 5 1/2 x 8"
ISBN 0-88995-312-0 paper CDN 18.95 USA 16.95
In The Tent Peg, award–winning novelist Aritha van Herk uses her unerring perception
and impressive literary skill to capture the mystical mood of the Arctic and the people
who are drawn to it.
In this the intriguing story, a young woman who disguises herself as a man to
work in a uranium prospecting camp deep in the Yukon mountains. J.L. is on the run
from an empty heart and is desperate for solitude. Yet solitude eludes her from the
moment she hangs up her pots and pans in the cook tent, and the men in the camp
begin to drift toward her, drawn by her silence. These men are drifters, romantics and
outcasts—men who have come to the North in search of answers for questions they
can't define.
Reviews
"The inevitable confrontations in this memorable novel leave no one unchanged."
–Library Journal
"Unusual, skilled fiction. . . . Van Herk successfully manipulates an unusual narrative."
–Booklist
"Written with care, sensitivity and considerable style."
–Publisher's Weekly
"Aritha van Herk's creation of a mystical world infiltrated by reality captures little blue
moments of intensity and truth that can hurt."
–Dallas Times–Herald |