*Finalist for two International Latino Book Awards*
*Selected as a Staff Pick by The Paris Review*
*Shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award*
*Finalist for the Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award (Multicultural)*
*SILVER MEDAL winner in the Independent Publisher Book Awards in Multicultural Fiction*
*SILVER winner of the Nautilus Book Award*
PRAISE FOR SUBDUCTION: “Subduction is a gritty novel in which floundering people find hope and understanding where they least expect it.”
—Foreword Reviews The brilliance of
Subduction only suggests the wonders to come. It is a good day for us when Kristen Millares Young puts pen to paper. Highly recommended.
—Luis Alberto Urrea, winner of the American Book Award, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, author of The House of Broken Angels, The Devil’s Highway, Queen of America, Into the Beautiful North, The Hummingbird’s Daughter. In this commanding novel
, Kristen Millares Young captures the brutality of an anthropological gaze upon a Makah community. Her complex, exquisitely shaped characters embody the calamity of intrusion and the beauty of resilience.
—Elissa Washuta, author of My Body is a Book of Rules and Starvation Mode Young beautifully and vividly renders the Pacific Northwest, particularly the unique world of Neah Bay.
Subduction is at once a thought-provoking meditation on the geography and geology of the natural world and a generous exploration of the natural shifts and movements that shape her characters.
—Jonathan Evison, New York Times bestselling author, Lawn Boy, This is Your Life Harriet Chance!, West of Here, All About Lulu, and The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving Fleeing the shattered remains of her marriage and treachery by her sister, a Latina anthropologist named Claudia takes refuge in Neah Bay, a Native whaling village on the jagged Pacific coast. Claudia yearns to lose herself to the songs of the tribe and the secrets of a spirited hoarder named Maggie. Instead, she stumbles into Maggie’s prodigal son Peter, who, spurred by his mother’s failing memory, has returned seeking answers to his father’s murder. Claudia helps Peter’s family convey a legacy delayed for decades by that death, but her presence, echoing centuries of fraught contact with indigenous peoples, brings lasting change and real damage. Through the ardent collision of Peter and Claudia,
Subduction portrays not only their strange allegiance after grievous losses but also their shared hope of finding solace and community on the Makah Indian Reservation. An intimate tale of stunning betrayals,
Subduction bears witness to the power of stories to disrupt—and to heal.
Orcas Island Literary Festival Panel highlighted in Seattle Met
The shore pulled away. Froth churned from its feet to hers. The engines hummed through her bones.
From the aft deck, Claudia looked back toward the city they made home. She searched the skyline for places they had been happy'the top of the space needle, a waterfront park, the Ferris wheel'until her westward passage split the horizon into expanses of gray, demarcated into sea and sky by hue alone.
Puget Sound opened in fathoms below the ferry.
Claudia left town without saying her goodbyes. Seattle was a small world. Movers must have swarmed her house to clear out Andrew's belongings in the space of one morning. The neighbors would have seen.
What had they seen? She couldn't bring herself to ask whether her sister had been on site to supervise, and Claudia hid her phone in case someone felt like sending unsolicited glimpses'of Maria deciding what to take, practicing wifeliness. Slipping Andrew a kiss for courage as the first box was packed. Claudia pictured Maria's thick curls, her narrow shoulders, her rounded hips. Birthing hips.
The broadcaster's voice echoed through the loudspeakers, cautioning passengers about unknown items and suspicious activity.
It was cowardly of Andrew not to deliver the news in person. Worse still, Maria. Did they think she would handle it poorly? That she was dangerous?
Listening to the roar of the props, Claudia saw what her fate might have been'her body lying in the bathtub, blue and bloated. Afloat. Her stomach twisted. It was more than she could take'or forgive. They know what they are doing, she thought. Yet they think I deserve it.
