My other experience with Brodsky’s work is her Olympus Bound series (which starts with The Immortals), where she took the ancient Greek gods into modern times, and which I enjoyed. So when I saw that she wrote a book about the meeting of the Inuit and the Norse, I was intrigued, and very willing to give it a try.
I was very pleased to see that she did a lot of research, and consulted with actual Inuit, because my one concern with reading indigenous American themed books not written by indigenous authors is how much are they bringing their own biases into their stories. The end notes of this book make it clear how much she wanted to tell this story, how important to her it was to get it right, but that she also recognizes she can never tell it with complete truth, and any errors are her responsibility alone.
Getting that out of the way, Omat was born with the spirit of his dead father (recently deceased in a terrible accident that killed all the young men of his family’s camp). His grandfather is their family’s angakkuq (shaman), and he’s raised to follow in his footsteps. Slight problem – Omat was born a girl. Omat doesn’t read as trans in the modern sense – this is deeper than that. The issue is that there are strict gender roles and taboos associated with each gender. As long as Omat isn’t fully a woman, his place seems secure. But you can see where that will inevitably go.
What Omat doesn’t know is that the Norse have come to Vinland (Newfoundland), and their arrival could signal the end for her family. What I really liked about this story is how the author weaves in the gods of the Norse, and their Ragnarok. They know their end is coming if they can’t fend off the Christian god, so they’re driving their followers on to North America. But the people already there have their own gods, and they see the problem that the Aesir pose. Omat is caught squarely in the middle of this fight.
I did really enjoy this book – it was lovely to see an indigenous centered story, and I thoroughly enjoyed how the author wove it into the actual events of the Vinland settlement.