Animal Heart

by Brenda Peterson

When an eerie mass stranding of whales and dolphins takes place along the mist-shrouded Oregon coast, forensic wildlife pathologist Isabel Spinner and her friend and coworker Marian Windhorse Gray covertly investigate this disaster as a crime against wildlife. For years, Isabel has kept plenty of emotional distance between herself and other humans while devoting herself to easing the suffering of animals. But when Isabel meets Marshall McGreggor, an undersea photographer whose recent transplant has him delving into the mystery surrounding his new heart, the two find themselves making surprising decisions that will forever change their lives.
In this, her fourth, novel, renowned author Brenda Peterson offers a captivating love story of people whose compassion for animals compels them into extraordinary acts of heroism. Based on cutting-edge science, this powerful page-turner tackles such timely and troubling issues as low-frequency active sonar and animal experimentation and forewarns of a future of Dead Zone oceans, disappearing species, and a world with creatures whose DNA boundaries have been genetically blurred. At once prescient and poignant, Animal Heart is a haunting, highly original story of the deep bonds between humans and animals--and of our inevitably linked fates.

292 pages, Hardcover

First published March 23, 2004

About the author

Brenda Peterson is the author of over 20 books, including the recently released murder mystery, Stiletto. Her first memoir Build Me an Ark: A Life with Animals, chosen as a “Best Spiritual Book of 2001,” to three novels, one of which, Duck and Cover, was chosen by New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year. Her second memoir, a dark comedy of family and faith, is I Want To Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth; it was selected by The Christian Science Monitor among the Top Ten Best Non-Fiction Books and chosen by independent bookstores as an Indie Next and a Great Read.
Her non-fiction has appeared in numerous national newspapers, journals, and magazines, including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, Reader’s Digest, Christian Science Monitor, O: The Oprah Magazine, and Utne Reader. Oprah.com featured her Your Life is a Book: How to Craft and Publish Your Memoir. Her new kid’s are Wild Orca and Lobo: A Wolf Family Returns Home.

Reviews

[Jessica Rugg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved Peterson's book, "Build Me an Ark" and wanted to read her other books after having read that. I was hesitant to read "Animal Heart" because of the reviews and synopses of it online. I thought it might be a little too weird for me, but I actually really liked it. It's like a historical environmental animal-rights fiction book from twenty years ago, with a little bit of romance mixed in.

This book mostly deals with love and loss, and environmental and animal rights issues. There are many abrupt POV changes, sometimes multiple times over the span of a single page. It is a bit jarring at first, but you get used to it.

Content:

Language:
There is some swearing in the book.

Violence:
There is descriptions of what happens to animals in medical/scientific research labs, and descriptions of the harm done to sea animals after underwater weapons testing, but other than that, there isn't violence mentioned in the book.

Relationships:
There are relationships between unmarried people in the book. There is one description of what happens between men and women.

[Maia Chowdhury · Rating 5 out of 5]

Care for animals of land and sea forms the backbone of this romantic tale of ocean science adventure. Beautifully descriptive story that I would love to see as a movie, since the writing is so easy to visualize in a film-like manner. I wonder if it would have to be created in animation - maybe Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli would tackle it.

Animal Heart

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

In part of his famous warning at the beginning of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain said, "persons attempting to find a moral [in this narrative] will be banished." After reading Animal Heart: A Novel, by Brenda Paterson, I feel as though I should be banished for my lack of morals. While I like to consider myself a kinda-sorta-maybe environmentally-friendly person (Come on! I vote Democrat, I recycle, I don't buy farmed fish!), this book made me feel incredibly guilty at both the inhumanity with which my species treats other animals and at my own failure to do anything more than my three little accomplishments above enumerated. Now, I don't like and don't appreciate hammer-over-the-head guilt. I prefer my guilt trips to be brought on by narrative more subtle and searching. However, as I find myself equivocating so often on this site, this book has other redeeming qualities. It is well written. The characters are interesting. The descriptions of the Oregon coast and Puget Sound are realistic enough to give me, a Northwesterner, a sense of home. And so I reluctantly grant four stars rather than three. Maybe the book will goad me towards being a little more conscious of other species.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel weaves the lives of a couple of forensic anthropologists working in the Pacific Northwest. It is a work on fiction but based on true events and the author's experience working to bring awareness to the plight of marine mammals and sea life threatened by the US Navy's use of excessive amounts of sonar in our oceans. This is a really brief synopsis and really does not do the book credit. I would recommend it especially to animal lovers.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good story, she is a local author and animal lover, mixes fictional story based on current issues