Sounding the Blood

This debut novel, set in a 1915 whaling station in the Queen Charlotte Islands, invokes the spirits of five dreamers held hostage to time, place, and memory: Leo Slaney, whose fumbled overtures to repair his marriage mask guilt and repressed desire; Nora, Leo's distraught wife destroyed by loss; Isobel, their rebellious daughter awakened to the forbidden love of a Japanese suitor; Lee Sun, an innocent seduced by opium in Victoria's Chinatown; and Kazuo Yamamoto, a wronged outsider yearning for his wife in Japan. Hale expertly unwinds the story through the voices of each character. -- Quill & Quire