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I Heard the Owl Call My Name
In a world that knows too well the anguish inherent in the clash of old ways and new lifestyles, Margaret Craven's classic and timeless story of a young man's journey into the Pacific Northwest is as relevant today as ever.
Here amid the grandeur of British Columbia stands the village of Kingcome, a place of salmon runs and ancient totems - a village so steeped in time that, according to Kwakiutl legend, it was founded by two brothers left on earth after the great flood. Yet in this Eden of such natural beauty and richness, the old culture of totems and potlaches is under attack - slowly being replaced by a new culture of prefab houses and alcoholism. Into this world, where an entire generation of young people has become disenchanted and alienated from their heritage, Craven introduces Mark Brian, a young vicar sent to the small isolated parish by his church.
This is Mark's journey of discovery - a journey that will teach him about life, death, and the transforming power of love. It is a journey that will resonate in the mind of readers long after the book is done.
Here amid the grandeur of British Columbia stands the village of Kingcome, a place of salmon runs and ancient totems - a village so steeped in time that, according to Kwakiutl legend, it was founded by two brothers left on earth after the great flood. Yet in this Eden of such natural beauty and richness, the old culture of totems and potlaches is under attack - slowly being replaced by a new culture of prefab houses and alcoholism. Into this world, where an entire generation of young people has become disenchanted and alienated from their heritage, Craven introduces Mark Brian, a young vicar sent to the small isolated parish by his church.
This is Mark's journey of discovery - a journey that will teach him about life, death, and the transforming power of love. It is a journey that will resonate in the mind of readers long after the book is done.
159 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
345 people are currently reading
6551 people want to read
About the author
Margaret Craven
12 books38 followersMargaret was the daughter of Arthur J. Craven, a lawyer, and Emily K. Craven. After she and her twin Wilson were born, her family, including an older brother, Leslie (born 1889), moved from Montana to Bellingham, Washington. After finishing high school in Bellingham, Margaret went to Stanford University (Palo Alto, California) where she majored in history and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
Upon graduating with distinction in 1924, she moved to San Jose, California, where she was secretary to the managing editor of the Mercury Herald. Soon she began writing the editorials. After the death of the editor, Margaret moved back to Palo Alto and began writing short stories for magazines like the Delineator. When her father died, her mother came to live with her and they moved to San Francisco. In 1941 her stories began appearing in the Saturday Evening Post. Although seriously hindered by near-blindness caused by a busaccident and bacterial infection, she continued to write. In 1960, an operation gave her sight back, and she began to write novels.
Margaret and her mother moved to Sacramento, California in 1959, where her brother Wilson was living. She learned about the Native-Americans of the northern British Columbia coast, first from her brother Wilson who had visited there, and then from reading published accounts of the native culture. In 1962, Margaret arranged with the Columbia Coast Mission of the Anglican Church to visit Kingcome and other native Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) villages on the B.C. coast. Out of this experience came her first novel, I Heard the Owl Call My Name, which was published in Canada in 1967, and then in 1973 in the U.S. where it became a best seller. The same year it was adapted as a television movie for General Electric Theater on CBS. The American edition of the book sold over one million copies and was translated into several languages.
Margaret Craven died at home in Sacramento on July 19, 1980, predeceased by both her mother and her twin brother Wilson.
Upon graduating with distinction in 1924, she moved to San Jose, California, where she was secretary to the managing editor of the Mercury Herald. Soon she began writing the editorials. After the death of the editor, Margaret moved back to Palo Alto and began writing short stories for magazines like the Delineator. When her father died, her mother came to live with her and they moved to San Francisco. In 1941 her stories began appearing in the Saturday Evening Post. Although seriously hindered by near-blindness caused by a busaccident and bacterial infection, she continued to write. In 1960, an operation gave her sight back, and she began to write novels.
Margaret and her mother moved to Sacramento, California in 1959, where her brother Wilson was living. She learned about the Native-Americans of the northern British Columbia coast, first from her brother Wilson who had visited there, and then from reading published accounts of the native culture. In 1962, Margaret arranged with the Columbia Coast Mission of the Anglican Church to visit Kingcome and other native Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) villages on the B.C. coast. Out of this experience came her first novel, I Heard the Owl Call My Name, which was published in Canada in 1967, and then in 1973 in the U.S. where it became a best seller. The same year it was adapted as a television movie for General Electric Theater on CBS. The American edition of the book sold over one million copies and was translated into several languages.
Margaret Craven died at home in Sacramento on July 19, 1980, predeceased by both her mother and her twin brother Wilson.
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June 13, 2025
This book will stay with you as long as you live. I should know - I first read it nearly 60 years ago! I was a callow pre-teen.
To a kid like I was, life is getting things YOUR way. But the life we MUST learn to live is SHARING your life in ways that mean something to the ones with whom you share it.
So it is with young Father Mark. A stranger preaching a strange message of forgiveness to strangers, he must learn his lesson FAST and share it WELL... HIS OWN way!
Only a few years before I read this wonderful story, my family and I had boarded the intercontinental trans-Canada passenger train for British Columbia. It was to be my first glimpse of the Pacific.
My Great-Aunt Lila and Uncle Jack had invited us for a pleasant lunch, then had driven us all down to the old ferry terminal in Vancouver for the trip across the strait to Vancouver Island.
And, oh, that salty and enlivening first breath of sea air!
If you’ve never visited our continent’s Northwest Coast, you’d find yourself enraptured by that fresh salt tangy breeze. Imagine yourself there with the kid I was back then, casting croutons into the ocean as the wake of the ferry widened behind you - the warm, brash winds over the open water ruffling your hair - and watching, spellbound, those expert plummets of the raucous seabirds into the foaming wake to retrieve their midday snacks.
And oh, their wild, raucous cries!
Ah, the deep blue Pacific Ocean - with its abundant evidence of undersea marine life flourishing so gloriously in that warm, deep, Alive Blue Water.
And the famed Haida Totem Poles along the shore with their phantasmagorical animal faces...
Well, young Father Mark finds himself in just such a nature-reverent coastal aboriginal village as these richly painted poles suggested to me on that delightful day in my own life, 63 years ago.
But poor Mark Brian doesn't know he has less than two years to live.
His doctor has hesitantly announced the news only to his wise Bishop...
But his Bishop doesn't want young Mark to know! Because, ‘If he knows, he'll try too hard,’ he says wistfully.
You see, Mark is just a kid, fresh out of theology college!
So Mark has to learn to EASE quickly into his role - his role as chosen local proclaimer of the coming of the Kingdom - in this remote band of aboriginal survivors on the Pacific coast in British Columbia.
And to do that he needs to quickly find who he HIMSELF really IS, in a village fittingly called KINGCOME. Otherwise, he’ll never truly know his OWN version of that beautiful Biblical prayer.
But his quest for identity won't be easy...
Telling how he pulls it off is Craven's story, and she does it brilliantly.
This has been an cult classic here in Canada for many, many years. Our better booksellers STILL stock it.
You have to READ this quiet and charmingly evocative little book!
If you read it through a misty, rainy Sunday afternoon, you'll feel as if you're right there with Father Mark in the sacred spaces of our West Coast rainforests, alone among a straggling, struggling band of descendants of our proud Canadian First Nations who are themselves as much at sea in life as young Mark himself has been - until now.
You'll LOVE it!
To a kid like I was, life is getting things YOUR way. But the life we MUST learn to live is SHARING your life in ways that mean something to the ones with whom you share it.
So it is with young Father Mark. A stranger preaching a strange message of forgiveness to strangers, he must learn his lesson FAST and share it WELL... HIS OWN way!
Only a few years before I read this wonderful story, my family and I had boarded the intercontinental trans-Canada passenger train for British Columbia. It was to be my first glimpse of the Pacific.
My Great-Aunt Lila and Uncle Jack had invited us for a pleasant lunch, then had driven us all down to the old ferry terminal in Vancouver for the trip across the strait to Vancouver Island.
And, oh, that salty and enlivening first breath of sea air!
If you’ve never visited our continent’s Northwest Coast, you’d find yourself enraptured by that fresh salt tangy breeze. Imagine yourself there with the kid I was back then, casting croutons into the ocean as the wake of the ferry widened behind you - the warm, brash winds over the open water ruffling your hair - and watching, spellbound, those expert plummets of the raucous seabirds into the foaming wake to retrieve their midday snacks.
And oh, their wild, raucous cries!
Ah, the deep blue Pacific Ocean - with its abundant evidence of undersea marine life flourishing so gloriously in that warm, deep, Alive Blue Water.
And the famed Haida Totem Poles along the shore with their phantasmagorical animal faces...
Well, young Father Mark finds himself in just such a nature-reverent coastal aboriginal village as these richly painted poles suggested to me on that delightful day in my own life, 63 years ago.
But poor Mark Brian doesn't know he has less than two years to live.
His doctor has hesitantly announced the news only to his wise Bishop...
But his Bishop doesn't want young Mark to know! Because, ‘If he knows, he'll try too hard,’ he says wistfully.
You see, Mark is just a kid, fresh out of theology college!
So Mark has to learn to EASE quickly into his role - his role as chosen local proclaimer of the coming of the Kingdom - in this remote band of aboriginal survivors on the Pacific coast in British Columbia.
And to do that he needs to quickly find who he HIMSELF really IS, in a village fittingly called KINGCOME. Otherwise, he’ll never truly know his OWN version of that beautiful Biblical prayer.
But his quest for identity won't be easy...
Telling how he pulls it off is Craven's story, and she does it brilliantly.
This has been an cult classic here in Canada for many, many years. Our better booksellers STILL stock it.
You have to READ this quiet and charmingly evocative little book!
If you read it through a misty, rainy Sunday afternoon, you'll feel as if you're right there with Father Mark in the sacred spaces of our West Coast rainforests, alone among a straggling, struggling band of descendants of our proud Canadian First Nations who are themselves as much at sea in life as young Mark himself has been - until now.
You'll LOVE it!
October 18, 2015
Updated 22 July 2013
Well, I’ve reread this book that I first read so many years ago and I do believe, well perhaps there were one or two other books in the past that have had the same effect on me, that this is the first book that has left me with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes when I finished it. I went to bed and finally reread the end and thought my….what an incredible wonderful work!
This is such a simple story but it shines through with all the wonders of our life on this magnificent planet of ours. I live in the western world, admittedly slightly quieter here in “rusticana” in south-west France after working in bustling London, but the “goodness” that flows from this book is rather touching.
Kingcome (the native Amercans who still live there, call it Quee) is situated in the “remote Northest Pacific, and purely reading about it makes one immediately want to become a nun or a priest and follow on a spiritual pursuit of life. I even started thinking back to the days when I was mad about Buddhism and dreamed of going to Lhasa, in Tibet’s forbidden city as the French explorer, Alexandra David–Neel had done on her 1923 expedition there.
The first paragraph of this work sets the scene for the young vicar, Mark Brian, who is unaware that he only has a few years to live before he is sent to Kingcome:
“ ‘The doctor said to the Bishop, ‘So you can see, lord, your young ordinand can live no more than three years and doesn’t know it. Will you tell him, and what will you do with him?
The Bishop said to the doctor, ‘Yes, I’ll tell him but not yet…..How much time has he for an active life?’
‘A little less than two years if he’s lucky.’
‘So short a time to learn so much. It leaves me no choice. I shall send him to my hardest parish. I shall send him to Kingcome on patrol of the Indian villages.’
‘Then I hope you’ll pray for him, my lord.’
But the bishop only answered gently that it was where he would wish to go if he were young again and in the ordinand’s place.’ ”
Kingcome is a Christian village, with its church and vicarage but it also lives and thrives with its fundamental beliefs, myths, totems, winds and rains. The village is in fact “the salmon that comes up the river to spawn…the village is the talking bird, the owl, who calls the name of the man who is going to die, and the silver-tipped grizzly who ambles into the village…”
I believe that Mark was fated to go to this village in search of his own destiny. He learns all about the Indian culture and slowly but surely he is accepted into their life style. He never asks for their help but because he is who he is, the villagers end up loving him. Mark had that essential element that many people lack, that of “goodness” but he also had the quality of laugher and that always goes down well anywhere in the world, as long as you are laughing with someone and not at them.
The book is full of wonderful sentences. To me one of the most touching was when the Bishop is discussing Kingcome with Mark before his departure
“This is the village. If you go there, from the time you tie up at the float in the inlet, the village is you. But there is one thing you must understand. They will not thank you. Even if you should leave a broken man, they will not thank you. There is no word for thank you in Kwákwala.”
Yes, that may be correct but tacitly Mark was indeed thanked by the villagers. He had soon learned from his initial arrival that he should step back from their customs until they accepted him and gradually they did.
I loved the villagers, especially Jim (who proved to be a true friend) when he met the vicar and took him by boat to the village. The difficulty in getting the organ from the boat onto the canoes that they had lashed together was indeed a feat. Old Marta, the matriarch of the village was a character, and how she responded in a quite different way to what Mark had expected her to say when he told her that he had heard the owl call his name.
The difficulties of living in a vicarage that was slowly collapsing; funerals that he assisted at; the “professional mourners”, who took it in turns wailing when someone died. The discontinuation of the old funerals where the dead were buried up in the trees known as the “grave trees” (now that was a splendid idea!); the young Indians leaving the village to go and live in the “Western civilization” but also to obtain the education that it provided. Mark’s awareness that he was a “guest” here at the beginning but gradually becoming an essential part of their sadness through death and floods but joy in their dancing, continual hope and laughter.
The ending was not at all what I had expected. I had, of course, known that the vicar would die, as he was slowly becoming weaker and weaker, but then something quite extraordinary and macabre happened.
This is one of those remarkable, not to be forgotten, books that I’m so glad I have.
******************************************************
I was so delighted to see this on Goodreads this morning. My brother Ken, who lives in Kamloops, Canada, let me read this when I was staying with him; my it must have been twenty years ago, and I loved it! The actual title says it all and I'm going to purchase a copy of this and re-read it.
I couldn't resist adding part of a review that I read on Amazon this morning:
"With stunning narrative, the plot revolves around a young dying vicar, Mark Brian, who went to an Indian village called Kingcome in the Pacific Northwest completing his last mission (though he did not know he only had three years to live). He had to overcome many great difficulties in order to help and convert these proud, Kwakiutl native people, for the old ones were unreligious while the young ones had little respects toward the old people and the old way of life. His first problem was trying to be accepted into this struggling primitive community, which was starting to be swallowed into white man's world. Then he had to help preserve the old culture of totems and salmons from being replaced by a new culture of alcoholism and residential schools. In the end he did succeed in earning respect and trust, maybe even love, of the people, but, most of all, he learnt a most valuable lesson - the acceptence of death, life and submission, as quoted by the author".
I would love to read reviews of other Goodreads' readers too!
This is a stunning book and a must for those on a spiritual journey, as I am.
Well, I’ve reread this book that I first read so many years ago and I do believe, well perhaps there were one or two other books in the past that have had the same effect on me, that this is the first book that has left me with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes when I finished it. I went to bed and finally reread the end and thought my….what an incredible wonderful work!
This is such a simple story but it shines through with all the wonders of our life on this magnificent planet of ours. I live in the western world, admittedly slightly quieter here in “rusticana” in south-west France after working in bustling London, but the “goodness” that flows from this book is rather touching.
Kingcome (the native Amercans who still live there, call it Quee) is situated in the “remote Northest Pacific, and purely reading about it makes one immediately want to become a nun or a priest and follow on a spiritual pursuit of life. I even started thinking back to the days when I was mad about Buddhism and dreamed of going to Lhasa, in Tibet’s forbidden city as the French explorer, Alexandra David–Neel had done on her 1923 expedition there.
The first paragraph of this work sets the scene for the young vicar, Mark Brian, who is unaware that he only has a few years to live before he is sent to Kingcome:
“ ‘The doctor said to the Bishop, ‘So you can see, lord, your young ordinand can live no more than three years and doesn’t know it. Will you tell him, and what will you do with him?
The Bishop said to the doctor, ‘Yes, I’ll tell him but not yet…..How much time has he for an active life?’
‘A little less than two years if he’s lucky.’
‘So short a time to learn so much. It leaves me no choice. I shall send him to my hardest parish. I shall send him to Kingcome on patrol of the Indian villages.’
‘Then I hope you’ll pray for him, my lord.’
But the bishop only answered gently that it was where he would wish to go if he were young again and in the ordinand’s place.’ ”
Kingcome is a Christian village, with its church and vicarage but it also lives and thrives with its fundamental beliefs, myths, totems, winds and rains. The village is in fact “the salmon that comes up the river to spawn…the village is the talking bird, the owl, who calls the name of the man who is going to die, and the silver-tipped grizzly who ambles into the village…”
I believe that Mark was fated to go to this village in search of his own destiny. He learns all about the Indian culture and slowly but surely he is accepted into their life style. He never asks for their help but because he is who he is, the villagers end up loving him. Mark had that essential element that many people lack, that of “goodness” but he also had the quality of laugher and that always goes down well anywhere in the world, as long as you are laughing with someone and not at them.
The book is full of wonderful sentences. To me one of the most touching was when the Bishop is discussing Kingcome with Mark before his departure
“This is the village. If you go there, from the time you tie up at the float in the inlet, the village is you. But there is one thing you must understand. They will not thank you. Even if you should leave a broken man, they will not thank you. There is no word for thank you in Kwákwala.”
Yes, that may be correct but tacitly Mark was indeed thanked by the villagers. He had soon learned from his initial arrival that he should step back from their customs until they accepted him and gradually they did.
I loved the villagers, especially Jim (who proved to be a true friend) when he met the vicar and took him by boat to the village. The difficulty in getting the organ from the boat onto the canoes that they had lashed together was indeed a feat. Old Marta, the matriarch of the village was a character, and how she responded in a quite different way to what Mark had expected her to say when he told her that he had heard the owl call his name.
The difficulties of living in a vicarage that was slowly collapsing; funerals that he assisted at; the “professional mourners”, who took it in turns wailing when someone died. The discontinuation of the old funerals where the dead were buried up in the trees known as the “grave trees” (now that was a splendid idea!); the young Indians leaving the village to go and live in the “Western civilization” but also to obtain the education that it provided. Mark’s awareness that he was a “guest” here at the beginning but gradually becoming an essential part of their sadness through death and floods but joy in their dancing, continual hope and laughter.
The ending was not at all what I had expected. I had, of course, known that the vicar would die, as he was slowly becoming weaker and weaker, but then something quite extraordinary and macabre happened.
This is one of those remarkable, not to be forgotten, books that I’m so glad I have.
******************************************************
I was so delighted to see this on Goodreads this morning. My brother Ken, who lives in Kamloops, Canada, let me read this when I was staying with him; my it must have been twenty years ago, and I loved it! The actual title says it all and I'm going to purchase a copy of this and re-read it.
I couldn't resist adding part of a review that I read on Amazon this morning:
"With stunning narrative, the plot revolves around a young dying vicar, Mark Brian, who went to an Indian village called Kingcome in the Pacific Northwest completing his last mission (though he did not know he only had three years to live). He had to overcome many great difficulties in order to help and convert these proud, Kwakiutl native people, for the old ones were unreligious while the young ones had little respects toward the old people and the old way of life. His first problem was trying to be accepted into this struggling primitive community, which was starting to be swallowed into white man's world. Then he had to help preserve the old culture of totems and salmons from being replaced by a new culture of alcoholism and residential schools. In the end he did succeed in earning respect and trust, maybe even love, of the people, but, most of all, he learnt a most valuable lesson - the acceptence of death, life and submission, as quoted by the author".
I would love to read reviews of other Goodreads' readers too!
This is a stunning book and a must for those on a spiritual journey, as I am.
Read
November 27, 2020"'Always when I leave the village,' the Bishop said slowly, ' I try to define what it means to me, why it sends me back to the world refreshed and confident. Always I fail. It is so simple, it is difficult. When I try to put it in to words, it comes out one of those unctuous, over-pious platitudes at which bishops are expected to excel.'
They both laughed.
'But when I reach here and see the great scar where the inlet side shows its bones, for a moment I know.'
'What, my lord?'
'That for me it has always been easier here, where only the fundamentals count, to learn what every man must learn in this world.'
'And that, my lord?'
'Enough of the meaning of life to be ready to die,'" (p.140).
That more or less sums up this wonderful little book - within the first couple of pages we are told that the Bishop knows that one of his priests, a young ordinand, is going to die of a terminal illness - the priest by the way does not know and does not realise the significance of what people have been saying to him or how they have been looking at him, until he hears the owl call his name as per the title - and so sends him to the remote parish of Kingcome in British Columbia to prepare him spiritually for his end.
God knows I am not a Christian nor even a believer, but all the same I was stung feeling the poignancy as I reached the end of the story, one of the characters blamed sea water in my eyes, I had got sun cream into my own.
There is a unity of form of subject - the story seems to be told in the manner of one of the oral tales of the Dzawa̱da̱'enux̱w tribe (Kwakwakaʼwakw nation), it is laconic and centres on actions. The life of a Priest even in British Columbia is not exactly fast paced, so the story unfolds into a different sense of time, it must be set in the mid 1960s - it was first published in 1968 - but despite the changing seasons (most of which seem to be different kinds of rainy season) and the round of the school year much of the noise of the human world is stilled so that eventually having observed the life cycle of the salmon the priest is able to hear the owl call his name, not in despair or in joy, but simply to recognise it for what it is.
The people of the parish are wary of the priest, a story in this book is how they grow to accept each other, priest and people, it is not clear if they are Christians or if Christianity is another aspect to their traditional beliefs, towards the end many of the church goers are described as agnostics and atheists - but they still go to church, which possibly is a very Anglican (Episcoplian) thing to to do.
A great book, the best I have read for a while.
They both laughed.
'But when I reach here and see the great scar where the inlet side shows its bones, for a moment I know.'
'What, my lord?'
'That for me it has always been easier here, where only the fundamentals count, to learn what every man must learn in this world.'
'And that, my lord?'
'Enough of the meaning of life to be ready to die,'" (p.140).
That more or less sums up this wonderful little book - within the first couple of pages we are told that the Bishop knows that one of his priests, a young ordinand, is going to die of a terminal illness - the priest by the way does not know and does not realise the significance of what people have been saying to him or how they have been looking at him, until he hears the owl call his name as per the title - and so sends him to the remote parish of Kingcome in British Columbia to prepare him spiritually for his end.
God knows I am not a Christian nor even a believer, but all the same I was stung feeling the poignancy as I reached the end of the story, one of the characters blamed sea water in my eyes, I had got sun cream into my own.
There is a unity of form of subject - the story seems to be told in the manner of one of the oral tales of the Dzawa̱da̱'enux̱w tribe (Kwakwakaʼwakw nation), it is laconic and centres on actions. The life of a Priest even in British Columbia is not exactly fast paced, so the story unfolds into a different sense of time, it must be set in the mid 1960s - it was first published in 1968 - but despite the changing seasons (most of which seem to be different kinds of rainy season) and the round of the school year much of the noise of the human world is stilled so that eventually having observed the life cycle of the salmon the priest is able to hear the owl call his name, not in despair or in joy, but simply to recognise it for what it is.
The people of the parish are wary of the priest, a story in this book is how they grow to accept each other, priest and people, it is not clear if they are Christians or if Christianity is another aspect to their traditional beliefs, towards the end many of the church goers are described as agnostics and atheists - but they still go to church, which possibly is a very Anglican (Episcoplian) thing to to do.
A great book, the best I have read for a while.
May 3, 2020
When we read Margaret Craven's brilliant and evocative I Heard the Owl Call My Name in junior high (and I would consider I Heard the Owl Call my Name while not perhaps suitable for young readers, definitely both appropriate and fitting for anyone above the age of twelve or so), I just and mainly enjoyed and appreciated the author's narrative as a heart-warming and in many ways also heart-wrenching reading experience (both sweet and sad at the same time, with a text that has the power to envelop, to make one think, to make one laugh and also, and finally, to make one cry, but with tears that are nevertheless and all the same cleansing, healing and optimistic).
And rereading this novel, rereading I Heard the Owl Call my Name as an adult and for the first time in decades, and as an increasingly critical peruser who has recently become painfully aware of the fact that there has been and continues to be rather much patronising stereotyping and cultural appropriation with regard to Native American and Native Canadian culture, lore and thematics, and this is especially and even seemingly regularly the case with regard to literature for children and young adults penned by authors who are NOT of aboriginal, not of Native American or Canadian background, I have now and with increasing pleasure realised just how special and in many ways avant-guarde Margaret Craven's writing in I Heard the Owl Call my Name truly is. For the author has definitely and with grace, beauty and above all truth portrayed the lives of a people, not her own (with that I mean, not of her own ethnic and cultural background).
When Mark Brian (a young vicar who is dying but unaware of this fact) is sent by his bishop (who has been informed of Mark's condition by the doctor but has chosen not to let Mark know) to minister to the Kwakiutl village of Quee (which the whites have named Kingcome), he encounters beauty, tradition and ceremony and a generation of young men and women who have become both alienated and increasingly suspicious. And it is here, it is in Quee that Mark learns how to both live and die with compassion, understanding and commitment (he was sent to minister to the residents of Quee, but it is actually more the other way around, in so far that is is they who minister to Mark, who teach him and prepare him for both life and death). A book of great beauty, with a simple, but never simplistic, spare and entrancing writing style, I Heard the Owl Call my Name has much to tell, much to teach, and without moralising, without polemic!
Now while the main plot line of I Heard the Owl Call my Name is of course Mark Brian's journey to greater understanding and being prepared for not only the act of living but also of dying, Margaret Craven's narrative clearly always or at least mostly sympathises with the villagers. With a great deal of humour she describes how the villagers take their own small revenge on an individual they at first consider nothing but an intruder by feeding him foods they know he does not really like (like mashed turnips), and at least in the beginning continuously gossip about Mark's looks, his refined manners and that he will likely not be adept at either hunting or fishing. And while Mark in the end turns out to be the very opposite of an intruder (that he both becomes part of the village and actually even dies as a villager, as an accepted inhabitant and resident of Quee), Craven clearly and succinctly demonstrates that the villagers' original suspicions of Mark and their negative attitudes towards him are more than well-founded (from painful past experiences with non Native Canadian, non Aboriginal individuals, such as the British anthropologist who insists on calling the people of Quee Quackadoodles to the local teacher who despises them for being Native Canadian and who only accepted the posting because of the isolation pay being offered). And at the end of the novel, at the end of I Heard the Owl Call my Name, both Mark and the villagers have in many ways become one, have become joined and after his death, the villagers regard him as one of their own (and they lay him to rest in the village that has become Mark's home and the villagers his tribe, his people). Highly recommended!
And rereading this novel, rereading I Heard the Owl Call my Name as an adult and for the first time in decades, and as an increasingly critical peruser who has recently become painfully aware of the fact that there has been and continues to be rather much patronising stereotyping and cultural appropriation with regard to Native American and Native Canadian culture, lore and thematics, and this is especially and even seemingly regularly the case with regard to literature for children and young adults penned by authors who are NOT of aboriginal, not of Native American or Canadian background, I have now and with increasing pleasure realised just how special and in many ways avant-guarde Margaret Craven's writing in I Heard the Owl Call my Name truly is. For the author has definitely and with grace, beauty and above all truth portrayed the lives of a people, not her own (with that I mean, not of her own ethnic and cultural background).
When Mark Brian (a young vicar who is dying but unaware of this fact) is sent by his bishop (who has been informed of Mark's condition by the doctor but has chosen not to let Mark know) to minister to the Kwakiutl village of Quee (which the whites have named Kingcome), he encounters beauty, tradition and ceremony and a generation of young men and women who have become both alienated and increasingly suspicious. And it is here, it is in Quee that Mark learns how to both live and die with compassion, understanding and commitment (he was sent to minister to the residents of Quee, but it is actually more the other way around, in so far that is is they who minister to Mark, who teach him and prepare him for both life and death). A book of great beauty, with a simple, but never simplistic, spare and entrancing writing style, I Heard the Owl Call my Name has much to tell, much to teach, and without moralising, without polemic!
Now while the main plot line of I Heard the Owl Call my Name is of course Mark Brian's journey to greater understanding and being prepared for not only the act of living but also of dying, Margaret Craven's narrative clearly always or at least mostly sympathises with the villagers. With a great deal of humour she describes how the villagers take their own small revenge on an individual they at first consider nothing but an intruder by feeding him foods they know he does not really like (like mashed turnips), and at least in the beginning continuously gossip about Mark's looks, his refined manners and that he will likely not be adept at either hunting or fishing. And while Mark in the end turns out to be the very opposite of an intruder (that he both becomes part of the village and actually even dies as a villager, as an accepted inhabitant and resident of Quee), Craven clearly and succinctly demonstrates that the villagers' original suspicions of Mark and their negative attitudes towards him are more than well-founded (from painful past experiences with non Native Canadian, non Aboriginal individuals, such as the British anthropologist who insists on calling the people of Quee Quackadoodles to the local teacher who despises them for being Native Canadian and who only accepted the posting because of the isolation pay being offered). And at the end of the novel, at the end of I Heard the Owl Call my Name, both Mark and the villagers have in many ways become one, have become joined and after his death, the villagers regard him as one of their own (and they lay him to rest in the village that has become Mark's home and the villagers his tribe, his people). Highly recommended!
May 2, 2020
What a beautiful story! It feels as if I've watched a film, but then a film could never compete with the book. I loved it.
March 30, 2021
This was required reading in middle school. I loved it at the time, although I know now that this does not tell a complete story of Canada's and the church's abysmal treatment of Native Indians.
The young Anglican vicar's death at the end of the story was very moving, and I suspect it taught us young readers to have more of a reverence for the here and now, and for life in general.
I will never forget the advice Mark gave to some young students who were going to be integrated into a non-native school: essentially, it was "be good at sports, join in activities and clubs".
I remember thinking at the time: so being yourself is not enough? But I got the message. A truly beautiful and moving story.
The young Anglican vicar's death at the end of the story was very moving, and I suspect it taught us young readers to have more of a reverence for the here and now, and for life in general.
I will never forget the advice Mark gave to some young students who were going to be integrated into a non-native school: essentially, it was "be good at sports, join in activities and clubs".
I remember thinking at the time: so being yourself is not enough? But I got the message. A truly beautiful and moving story.
August 4, 2018
The depth and majesty of this telling is only equal to its superb "eyes" for those of the tribe who live in the village of Kingcome.
The natural world of the inlets of British Columbia and the path of Mark, the new vicar- are far, far beyond what only the eyes can see and the words describe.
Classic. If it is not, than it absolutely should be.
Would that all endings could be as worthy and dramatic as Mark's. And the acceptances of change, yet without a moment's forgetting of a giving respect and honor to past humans' efforts for better, be as solid as the elders.
More is said here in these few pages than is said in 500 or 600 page tomes of the current breed.
The natural world of the inlets of British Columbia and the path of Mark, the new vicar- are far, far beyond what only the eyes can see and the words describe.
Classic. If it is not, than it absolutely should be.
Would that all endings could be as worthy and dramatic as Mark's. And the acceptances of change, yet without a moment's forgetting of a giving respect and honor to past humans' efforts for better, be as solid as the elders.
More is said here in these few pages than is said in 500 or 600 page tomes of the current breed.
July 14, 2018
Such a pleasure to find this. So many books I no longer own - due to moving, life etc. I think this one passed to my mother; because I remember her saying how much she like it too.
December 5, 2019
A beautiful gem of a story. Many thanks to my Goodreads Friends who led me to this; I would miss a lot of good reading without you. I don't re-read many books, but this will be the exception.
March 20, 2017
I found the topics discussed to be all too simplified. The themes are life, death and friendship as well as how modern life is a threat to the traditions and culture of the First Nation people in Canada.
Through the author's writing I did not perceive the beauty of the land. Nature writing is a theme I enjoy, but I personally didn't find it here. The language is flat.
A character in the book is to die, and the way this is treated is not direct enough for me. Heap on the problems. Don’t give me the solution; that I will figure out myself.
Religion is presented in a balanced manner.
The audiobook narration is not hard to follow, but I would have preferred less theatrics in the telling. I didn’t particularly enjoy the sing-song tone.
I quite simply was not the right reader for this book. I don’t want life simplified. I prefer being shown life’s complexities. I am not looking for easy answers, and that is how they are drawn in this book. Maybe, for a young adult, the book can be used as a lesson for living.
Through the author's writing I did not perceive the beauty of the land. Nature writing is a theme I enjoy, but I personally didn't find it here. The language is flat.
A character in the book is to die, and the way this is treated is not direct enough for me. Heap on the problems. Don’t give me the solution; that I will figure out myself.
Religion is presented in a balanced manner.
The audiobook narration is not hard to follow, but I would have preferred less theatrics in the telling. I didn’t particularly enjoy the sing-song tone.
I quite simply was not the right reader for this book. I don’t want life simplified. I prefer being shown life’s complexities. I am not looking for easy answers, and that is how they are drawn in this book. Maybe, for a young adult, the book can be used as a lesson for living.
February 19, 2023
“He asked how she was. She was bad. It was her heart again. She was sure of it - she was determined she was not long for this world”.
This is a truly touching story of a young man, a priest, with only a few years left to live. He is sent by his Bishop to a secluded First Nations village. He makes the long trip to live with the Kwacultal band (pronounced ‘Kwacutal’) of the Tsawataineuk tribe (pronounced ‘Jowedaino’) in the 1960s wilderness of present-day British Columbia (side note: what a horrible name for a province in this land…Columbus, probably the worst ‘Indian’ slaver in this continent’s history, and ‘British’...a land that almost couldn’t be further from Britain. Can’t get more settler-colonial than that). But I digress…
Only after months of hard work and communal living, where survival depended on everyone working together, taking up most of the hours of the day, did he get closer to the ‘Indians’ of his parish. He slowly learns their language, their ways, and through suffering and mourning along with them, he finally becomes accepted. Throughout this process, he learns what it means to live and ultimately, how to be ready to die.
I enjoyed learning about the lifeway of the tribe, who were still living mostly as their ancestors had done. Small details, like their diets…the seaweed and corn dish called gluckaston, how they dip their food in the oil of the oolachon (candlefish) which is called ‘gleena’, native delicacies like berry sprouts cooked with alder and salal and salmon eggs baked with milkweed, topped with fern. ...and the way clamming season is a complete village affair, how deeply fishing is intertwined with communal life.
It was also great learning more about the significance of ceremonial dances, and why they are taken seriously. “If you were an Indian walking beside a stream in the woods, knowing the woods as only an Indian knows them, everything you saw would come to life in this dance with all its meaning and its beauty. Once they were like the coronations of a king, or the inauguration of a president. They were the great rituals of my people, solemn and important. Now the meaning is gone.”
But mostly, I liked learning how death was viewed by the Kwacultal. To them, death is natural, a completion of the cycle for which you were made. In this way, it is a triumph, not something to be sad about for long. Everyone in the village shared the death of a villager. One elder even scheduled a big dance and feast for the whole village in preparation for his death.
There are some truly sad moments as well as some uplifting moments here. Overall it’s a powerful book that shouldn’t be missed.
“It seemed to Mark that death belonged here as the mountains belonged, as the eagle belonged. And it seemed to him that the ugliness of death was as unimportant here as the fir needles which made the path soft beneath his feet.”
This is a truly touching story of a young man, a priest, with only a few years left to live. He is sent by his Bishop to a secluded First Nations village. He makes the long trip to live with the Kwacultal band (pronounced ‘Kwacutal’) of the Tsawataineuk tribe (pronounced ‘Jowedaino’) in the 1960s wilderness of present-day British Columbia (side note: what a horrible name for a province in this land…Columbus, probably the worst ‘Indian’ slaver in this continent’s history, and ‘British’...a land that almost couldn’t be further from Britain. Can’t get more settler-colonial than that). But I digress…
Only after months of hard work and communal living, where survival depended on everyone working together, taking up most of the hours of the day, did he get closer to the ‘Indians’ of his parish. He slowly learns their language, their ways, and through suffering and mourning along with them, he finally becomes accepted. Throughout this process, he learns what it means to live and ultimately, how to be ready to die.
I enjoyed learning about the lifeway of the tribe, who were still living mostly as their ancestors had done. Small details, like their diets…the seaweed and corn dish called gluckaston, how they dip their food in the oil of the oolachon (candlefish) which is called ‘gleena’, native delicacies like berry sprouts cooked with alder and salal and salmon eggs baked with milkweed, topped with fern. ...and the way clamming season is a complete village affair, how deeply fishing is intertwined with communal life.
It was also great learning more about the significance of ceremonial dances, and why they are taken seriously. “If you were an Indian walking beside a stream in the woods, knowing the woods as only an Indian knows them, everything you saw would come to life in this dance with all its meaning and its beauty. Once they were like the coronations of a king, or the inauguration of a president. They were the great rituals of my people, solemn and important. Now the meaning is gone.”
But mostly, I liked learning how death was viewed by the Kwacultal. To them, death is natural, a completion of the cycle for which you were made. In this way, it is a triumph, not something to be sad about for long. Everyone in the village shared the death of a villager. One elder even scheduled a big dance and feast for the whole village in preparation for his death.
There are some truly sad moments as well as some uplifting moments here. Overall it’s a powerful book that shouldn’t be missed.
“It seemed to Mark that death belonged here as the mountains belonged, as the eagle belonged. And it seemed to him that the ugliness of death was as unimportant here as the fir needles which made the path soft beneath his feet.”
August 24, 2013
This is one of the most powerful novels of the First Nations people I have ever read. The natives of Kingcome, where the novel is set, agree with this assessment. Surprisingly, it was written by a female American journalist who spent only 5 weeks living in Kingcome. Her imagination was captured by a report about Eric Powell, an Anglican priest who was sent to teach the natives in Kingcome but, by his own report, instead learned much from them about the peace that their culture brings to them—and could bring to him. Eric Powell still lives in the Islands, and has contributed his recipe for Apricot and Lemon Grass-stuffed Salmon to the BC Salmon Fisheries’ cookbook…. Which is a fun little tidbit to have…
December 7, 2014
"She waited as if she had waited all her life, as if she were part of time itself, gently and patiently. Did she remember that in the old days the Indian mother of the Kwakiutl band who lost a child kicked the small body three times and said to it, 'Do not look back. Do not turn your head. Walk straight on. You are going to the land of the owl'?"
I was recommended this book for my Canada project. Although written by an American, the story is set in British Columbia and tells of a young vicar who is sent to live with a native tribe. The reason for this is not much of a spoiler because it is literally written on the first page: The vicar has been sent to this particular post because his superior learned that the vicar was terminally ill and hoped that his experience with the tribe would help him cope.
There is some inconsistency in the story about this because the vicar doesn't know he is ill - so, logically, the plot is not rock solid. However, there is more to the story than the vicar's impending death. Craven explores the conflicts that arise between generations, between civilisations, the impact and dependency if one looses touch with the other.
"On Sunday after church the young people returned to school. Many of the tribe went to the river's edge to see them off in the canoes. And the young people regretted going and wanted to go, and the elders wanted to keep them and were relieved when they went. The little dissent went with them, and the village was at peace."
I Heard the Owl Call My Name is a very gentle book, very unassuming, but the naturalist writing and the simplicity with which the story is told ensures that that the story gets the point across -
"You suffered with them, and now you are theirs, and nothing will be the same again."
This review was first posted on BookLikes.
I was recommended this book for my Canada project. Although written by an American, the story is set in British Columbia and tells of a young vicar who is sent to live with a native tribe. The reason for this is not much of a spoiler because it is literally written on the first page: The vicar has been sent to this particular post because his superior learned that the vicar was terminally ill and hoped that his experience with the tribe would help him cope.
There is some inconsistency in the story about this because the vicar doesn't know he is ill - so, logically, the plot is not rock solid. However, there is more to the story than the vicar's impending death. Craven explores the conflicts that arise between generations, between civilisations, the impact and dependency if one looses touch with the other.
"On Sunday after church the young people returned to school. Many of the tribe went to the river's edge to see them off in the canoes. And the young people regretted going and wanted to go, and the elders wanted to keep them and were relieved when they went. The little dissent went with them, and the village was at peace."
I Heard the Owl Call My Name is a very gentle book, very unassuming, but the naturalist writing and the simplicity with which the story is told ensures that that the story gets the point across -
"You suffered with them, and now you are theirs, and nothing will be the same again."
This review was first posted on BookLikes.
December 8, 2020
I needed something short and quick to read and picked this up when I saw it at the library. I think I read it in junior high, although I may be confusing it with Hal Borland's When the Legends Die (both are books about Indians in the woods). It's a sweet, sad story about a young vicar with a terminal disease (which he is unaware of) who is sent to a parish in remote coastal British Columbia. No matter how much he does for the Indians, he is told, they will never say "thank you," because they have no word for thank you. I don't want to spoil it for you, but let's just say that friendship and love develop and Indians are able to find ways to express their thanks. And when you hear the owl call your name, it means death is nigh.
Furthermore, his house had no electricity, and its tiny bathroom was so small that when he sat upon the throne-of-thought he could not shut the door without hitting his knees, which was an outrage.
The young vicar suggested the teacher cut two round holes for his knees to stick through, and offered to trade his outhouse for the teacher's bathroom, but the teacher was not amused. There was one more thing he felt it his duty to inform the vicar. The vicar might as well know right now that as for himself, he was an atheist; he considered Christianity a calamity. He believed that any man who professed it must be incredibly naive.
The young vicar grinned and agreed. There were two kinds of naivete, he said, quoting Schweitzer; one not even aware of the problems, and another which has knocked on all the doors of knowledge and knows man can explain little, and is still willing to follow his convictions into the unknown.
"This takes courage," he said, and he thanked the teacher and returned to the vicarage.
October 3, 2017
This was a re-read for me, but it might as well have been my first time, I remembered so little. Mind you, I think I was in my teens when I read it the first time. My only memory of it was a feeling of melancholy.
The young vicar, Mark, is sent to the Kwakiutl village of Kingcome by his bishop, who knows Mark has a terminal illness, but chooses not to tell him. In our 21st century culture of consent, this just wouldn’t happen anymore. No doctor worth his or her salt would let a patient out of the office without informing him of the diagnosis.
It struck me during my reading how residential schools are mentioned matter-of-factly. How the clash of cultures becomes intense as the children come home for Christmas. The pain of the parents as their children are pulled towards the outside world and away from the old ways. The enticing lure of education and modernity for the children.
Although Mark is nominally in the village to minister to the community, it is he who receives the majority of the spiritual benefits. In his tenure in Kingcome, he learns more of friendship and community than he ever anticipated—and this is why his bishop sent him there. I shed a few tears at the end and found that my only memory of melancholy was wholly accurate.
The young vicar, Mark, is sent to the Kwakiutl village of Kingcome by his bishop, who knows Mark has a terminal illness, but chooses not to tell him. In our 21st century culture of consent, this just wouldn’t happen anymore. No doctor worth his or her salt would let a patient out of the office without informing him of the diagnosis.
It struck me during my reading how residential schools are mentioned matter-of-factly. How the clash of cultures becomes intense as the children come home for Christmas. The pain of the parents as their children are pulled towards the outside world and away from the old ways. The enticing lure of education and modernity for the children.
Although Mark is nominally in the village to minister to the community, it is he who receives the majority of the spiritual benefits. In his tenure in Kingcome, he learns more of friendship and community than he ever anticipated—and this is why his bishop sent him there. I shed a few tears at the end and found that my only memory of melancholy was wholly accurate.
April 1, 2023
This was a childhood read that has lived in a part of my soul for a long time. The five stars is for that. Recently I re-read "I Heard the Owl Call My Name," and I know I have aged, since the story now seems off, and the righteousness of the characters rankles (would it be considered ok today to not let someone know they have a terminal illness???). Though rereading this book brought back the nature, the trees, the cedars by the ocean (and of course this made me thing of Snow Falling On Ceaders, and wondered how much that novel was inspired by this one). I'm leaving the 5 stars. What lasts, even if it is wrong, has deep merit.
May 14, 2019
Assolutamente uno dei libri piu' belli che io abbia mai letto....
tutto si può riassumere in una sola frase "Eccomi, Signore!" , una frase che sta nel cuore di chi vive la Fede nel Signore, così come l'ha vissuta sino alla fine Padre Mark ,amando e crescendo insieme alla
sua gente, in uno sperduto villaggio irraggiungibile solo via fiume, nelle terre di Kingcome, British Columbia. Ogni volta che leggevo le pagine di questo libro avevo in mente solo questo incipit meraviglioso "Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis".
Mark, giovane prete, che ha vissuto condividendo le gioie, i dolori, i cambiamenti e le tradizioni dei suoi parrocchiani nativi Kwakwaka...donandosi sino alla fine. Una fede vissuta nelle normali circostanze della vita di ogni giorno, amando ogni volto che ha incontrato nella sua Parrocchia...dal piu'incallito peccatore al piu' retto nella Fede, unicamente perchè volti di Dio.
Ho pianto tutte le lacrime del mondo ieri sera chiudendo questo prezioso libro.......Riuscirò mai, io, povera disgraziata, a pronunciare sino alla fine "Eccomi Signore!" ????
tutto si può riassumere in una sola frase "Eccomi, Signore!" , una frase che sta nel cuore di chi vive la Fede nel Signore, così come l'ha vissuta sino alla fine Padre Mark ,amando e crescendo insieme alla
sua gente, in uno sperduto villaggio irraggiungibile solo via fiume, nelle terre di Kingcome, British Columbia. Ogni volta che leggevo le pagine di questo libro avevo in mente solo questo incipit meraviglioso "Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis".
Mark, giovane prete, che ha vissuto condividendo le gioie, i dolori, i cambiamenti e le tradizioni dei suoi parrocchiani nativi Kwakwaka...donandosi sino alla fine. Una fede vissuta nelle normali circostanze della vita di ogni giorno, amando ogni volto che ha incontrato nella sua Parrocchia...dal piu'incallito peccatore al piu' retto nella Fede, unicamente perchè volti di Dio.
Ho pianto tutte le lacrime del mondo ieri sera chiudendo questo prezioso libro.......Riuscirò mai, io, povera disgraziata, a pronunciare sino alla fine "Eccomi Signore!" ????
April 13, 2023
I am reading this for the third time as I like it so much!
July 19, 2018
The Swimmer's Season
The young vicar stopped his patching and descended the ladder.American author Margaret Craven (1901–80) first heard about the Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) culture on the coast of British Columbia from her brother, who had visited there, and arranged with the Columbia Coast Mission of the Anglican Church to see for herself. The immediate result was this short novel, published in Canada in 1967 to great acclaim, and in the US in 1973. In that it is fiction, the story is quietly affecting. But you also see the non-fiction writer building on her travel journal, compiling native legends and traditions, and making a plea for the preservation of a First Nation culture that was quickly being obliterated by the modern world. Both elements have their place, but they do not necessarily combine into a strong novel.
"Chief Eddy," he said earnestly, "there is something I have been meaning to ask you. How do you pronounce the name of your tribe?" It is spelled Tsawataineuk.
"Jowedaino."
There was a silence.
"Would you mind saying it again?"
"Jowedaino," and Mark listened more carefully than he had ever listened to any work in his entire life and could not tell if the word was Zowodaino or Chowudaino.
"And the name of the band to which your tribe belongs?" which in the books of anthropology is written Kwakiutl.
"Kwacutal," and Mark listened and could not tell if the word was Kwagootle, Kwakeetal or Kwakweetul.
"And the name of the cannibal who lived at the north end of the world?"
"Bakbakwalanuksiwae," and it came from the chief's lips like a ripple.
The premise is artificial but effective. A doctor tells a bishop that a young ordinand has less than three years to live, though he does not know it. The bishop decides not to tell the young vicar, in case it should make him try too hard, but sends him to the parish where he feels he will learn most quickly: the village of Kingcome, at the head of the Kingcome Inlet off Queen Charlotte Sound. The young vicar, whose name is Mark Brian, is given an Indian boatman to look after him for the first year. He sails upriver to his new parish, where he finds the people welcoming but both vicarage and church in poor repair. What follows is much like an Anglican version of Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop moved to the Pacific Northwest. Mark is naive but touchingly humble. For example, when the bishop offers to send him a prefabricated vicarage to replace the old one, he defers, preferring first to make the repairs with his own hands. When the new building does arrive a year or two later, all the men in the village now turn out to help him, for he has won their trust and in all sorts of ways made himself part of their lives.
Approaching Kingcome village
Although Mark is an Anglican vicar, religion is not a major theme of this book, but as much the background to his life as are the forests and mountains surrounding the village. He does not waste time thinking whether the ancient ceremonies and totems conflict with the Christian faith, but celebrates their importance to the tribe. When a young woman returns from the outside world pregnant with the child of her former boyfriend who has decided to remain there, Mark replies, "What you have done is strange to me, but I think I understand it"—which is, of course, to return part of the heritage to the village that gave them birth. Perhaps Mark is too good to be true, and the Biblical simplicity of the writing often reads more like fable than modern fiction, sometimes requiring a little indulgence from the reader.
Kingcome church today
Yet fables are the lifeblood of the culture, expressing the people's connection to life, death, and the animals, trees, and mountains around them. We hear the legend of the owl calling a person's name just before he is to die. We hear stories of the life-cycle of the salmon, which they call "The Swimmer." And it will be in terms of the Swimmer's end in some rock pool, its work of propagation done, that Mark's death will be evoked in the final pages. The two paragraphs I have chosen as my final quote come a little before the end, and do not include this specific image, but they do show Margaret Craven's writing at its simple best:
Soon the huge flights of snow geese would fly over the river on their way back to the nesting place, the spring swimmer woulf come up the river to the Clearwater, and on the river pairs of cocky, small, red-necked sawbills would rest, the father flying off when Mark passes and the mother pretending she had broken a wing to lead him awaw from her little ones. And each would feel the pull of the earth and know his small place upon it, as did the Indian in his village.
He went slowly up the river. In front of the vicarage he anchored the boat and waded ashore. He trudged up the black sands to the path and stopped. From the dark spruce he heard an owl call—once, and again—and the questions that had been rising all day long reached the door of his mind and opened it.
January 31, 2019
This is a classic work of fiction by an American journalist who lived for a time among the Indians of the small remote village of “Kingcome” on the coast of British Columbia, and wrote this book at the age of 69 in 1967.
The story follows young Vicar Mark Brian as he’s chosen by the Bishop who knows him to be terminally ill and who decides to provide an experience that will most enrich his last years which is to labor among the Indians who still live in the village unspoiled by civilization. Of course we know that those who seek to serve are often the recipient of much more than they give, and thus it is here.
It’s a short book, but one that will stay with you especially the last chapters.
Read For Modern Classics 1/31 5 stars
The story follows young Vicar Mark Brian as he’s chosen by the Bishop who knows him to be terminally ill and who decides to provide an experience that will most enrich his last years which is to labor among the Indians who still live in the village unspoiled by civilization. Of course we know that those who seek to serve are often the recipient of much more than they give, and thus it is here.
It’s a short book, but one that will stay with you especially the last chapters.
Read For Modern Classics 1/31 5 stars
September 23, 2013
5 stars for teaching me about Life.
I'm so happy they made us read this in 6th grade! Of course, that meant that only two other people liked it (I'm weird, aren't I? Everyone loved The Hobbit but me and no one loved this book but me.)
In its pages, I glimpsed something magical and meaningful, some truth about life. I think it helped shape who I am, at least a little.
I'm so happy they made us read this in 6th grade! Of course, that meant that only two other people liked it (I'm weird, aren't I? Everyone loved The Hobbit but me and no one loved this book but me.)
In its pages, I glimpsed something magical and meaningful, some truth about life. I think it helped shape who I am, at least a little.
February 13, 2023
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I Heard the Owl Call My Name is such a beautiful and haunting book. A young Anglican vicar is assigned to the remote outpost of Kingcome village, a tiny hamlet of indigenous peoples known as the Kwakiutl. On the very first page of the prologue, the reader learns that the young vicar is not long for this world, suffering from some unnamed terminal illness.
The reader is introduced to the beauty and ruggedness of British Columbia and to the culture and life style of a small group of people whose existence and livelihood are still based on the cycle of the seasons. But it is a disappearing culture, as the young people keep leaving for the “white man’s world.”
Our protagonist, wise beyond his years, feels great admiration, respect and love for the people and their way as life, their customs and traditions. And the villagers return that respect and admiration accepting Mark Bryan as one of their own.
This was a book club read, and for the first time in in four years, a story that had me crying real tears the last 10 pages. Sad and beautiful at the same time. Great book choice, Renny!
ATY Goodreads Challenge - 2023
Prompt #34 - a novella
I Heard the Owl Call My Name is such a beautiful and haunting book. A young Anglican vicar is assigned to the remote outpost of Kingcome village, a tiny hamlet of indigenous peoples known as the Kwakiutl. On the very first page of the prologue, the reader learns that the young vicar is not long for this world, suffering from some unnamed terminal illness.
The reader is introduced to the beauty and ruggedness of British Columbia and to the culture and life style of a small group of people whose existence and livelihood are still based on the cycle of the seasons. But it is a disappearing culture, as the young people keep leaving for the “white man’s world.”
Our protagonist, wise beyond his years, feels great admiration, respect and love for the people and their way as life, their customs and traditions. And the villagers return that respect and admiration accepting Mark Bryan as one of their own.
This was a book club read, and for the first time in in four years, a story that had me crying real tears the last 10 pages. Sad and beautiful at the same time. Great book choice, Renny!
ATY Goodreads Challenge - 2023
Prompt #34 - a novella
August 6, 2021
Read this years ago (fine it was over 40 years-ugh), and the sweetness of the story still stays with me.
This is one of the Christian reads my hardcore Baptist grandmother sent me. I resisted reading them for years thinking they would be too hamfisted, but nope.
This and one other (about a redheaded Quaker girl that wants to rebel...Cassie & Ike) made an impact because they transcend the Christian message and became well rounded stories about humanity, hope and the best of the human spirit. The others she sent...not so much.
Deserves to be a classic.
This is one of the Christian reads my hardcore Baptist grandmother sent me. I resisted reading them for years thinking they would be too hamfisted, but nope.
This and one other (about a redheaded Quaker girl that wants to rebel...Cassie & Ike) made an impact because they transcend the Christian message and became well rounded stories about humanity, hope and the best of the human spirit. The others she sent...not so much.
Deserves to be a classic.
July 10, 2016
A rather enchanting and beautiful story that captures both the vicar's thinking and the tribe's, somehow, in the words used. The language is spare and to the point - carved into a story like one of the masks. The Bishop is astonishingly wise, which is a bit hard to credit (Bishops being usually administrative rather than pastorally talented in my experience). But he had done his time there also.
I cried at the end - not a common event for me. I was completely taken by surprise by the people's acceptance of Mark. The final ending, afterwards, was, if it was the hand of God, the conferral of God's mercy and I did see that coming.
I cried at the end - not a common event for me. I was completely taken by surprise by the people's acceptance of Mark. The final ending, afterwards, was, if it was the hand of God, the conferral of God's mercy and I did see that coming.
May 18, 2024
🦉 Oh! Teen memories! A beautiful story of the wild and a friendship between two men. When you hear the owl in that certain way it means your end has come. A brief, potent and magically written tale.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 23, 2022
The doctor said to the Bishop, "So you see, my lord, your young ordinand can live no more than three years and doesn't know it. Will you tell him, and what will you do with him?"
Despite these opening lines, I hadn't expected this to be an emotional read. Well, to be fair to myself, it wasn't so until maybe the last third. By that time, Mark, "the young ordinand" had demonstrated his respect for the Natives of the small and remote Kingcome Village. It was very hard not to see their way of life through his eyes and to also become involved with the people.
There are many Native tribes along the west coast of North America. They both resemble each other and are different from one another. They have totems and dances and potlatches and are dependent on fish and other animals of this huge forest. They have myths and stories which are both different and similar. Each tribe is also different in the way peoples of the world are different, some being peaceful while others are war like. And then white man came among them and their world would never again be the same.
The tribe of Kingcome Village was peaceful and industrious. The book tells some of their stories. It tells of the reverence they have for the land and its inhabitants. It tells us by having us come to know the characters as individuals. The writing is good enough - more than adequate, in fact, and maybe so much so that it doesn't get in the way of what is being told.
I am always surprised at how much other people of Alaska read stories of this land because those stories rarely interest me. This is one, though of a British Columbia tribe, that I knew I would read eventually. 5-stars worth.
Despite these opening lines, I hadn't expected this to be an emotional read. Well, to be fair to myself, it wasn't so until maybe the last third. By that time, Mark, "the young ordinand" had demonstrated his respect for the Natives of the small and remote Kingcome Village. It was very hard not to see their way of life through his eyes and to also become involved with the people.
There are many Native tribes along the west coast of North America. They both resemble each other and are different from one another. They have totems and dances and potlatches and are dependent on fish and other animals of this huge forest. They have myths and stories which are both different and similar. Each tribe is also different in the way peoples of the world are different, some being peaceful while others are war like. And then white man came among them and their world would never again be the same.
The tribe of Kingcome Village was peaceful and industrious. The book tells some of their stories. It tells of the reverence they have for the land and its inhabitants. It tells us by having us come to know the characters as individuals. The writing is good enough - more than adequate, in fact, and maybe so much so that it doesn't get in the way of what is being told.
I am always surprised at how much other people of Alaska read stories of this land because those stories rarely interest me. This is one, though of a British Columbia tribe, that I knew I would read eventually. 5-stars worth.
September 28, 2019
I really wanted to give this book 5-stars , but there was a personal sadness to it and I won't read it again (one of my criteria for highest rating) ; I also won't recommend it to friends that will not appreciate the nuances . It was marvelously written and raised a rainbow of emotions for me .
My sadness was because in my formative years I had a number of friends who descended from the Cornplanter Indian tribe , part of the Seneca group , itself one of five tribes comprising the Iroquois nation .
I remember walking through the Cornplanter traditional lands as a Boy Scout , and seeing a Blue Heron take flight . I was told the Heron meant tranquility to the Cornplanters . In the early 1960s this 'Cornplater Tract' was given to John Abeek aka Cornplanter (Gaiänt'wakê, Kaintwakon) in 1784 , even though they had occupied this land for centuries , was bulldozed and flooded over . Now you have the Kinzua Reservoir and Recreation Area . The few remaining descendents of the tribe have tax-free gas stations and a casino in the middle of nowhere , NY .
My sadness was because in my formative years I had a number of friends who descended from the Cornplanter Indian tribe , part of the Seneca group , itself one of five tribes comprising the Iroquois nation .
I remember walking through the Cornplanter traditional lands as a Boy Scout , and seeing a Blue Heron take flight . I was told the Heron meant tranquility to the Cornplanters . In the early 1960s this 'Cornplater Tract' was given to John Abeek aka Cornplanter (Gaiänt'wakê, Kaintwakon) in 1784 , even though they had occupied this land for centuries , was bulldozed and flooded over . Now you have the Kinzua Reservoir and Recreation Area . The few remaining descendents of the tribe have tax-free gas stations and a casino in the middle of nowhere , NY .
July 4, 2019
The reader knows from page one that the young Vicar Mark Brian is doomed to die from a disease that he is as yet unaware of. The bishop who knows about Mark's impending death wisely sends him to Kingcome (Quee in the local tongue), a remote village in British Columbia. As the novel progresses it becomes apparent why the decision is a wise one.
This is how the First Nation inhabitants regard their village: “His village is not the strip of land four miles long and three miles wide that is his as long as the sun rises and the moon sets. The myths are the village and the winds and the rains. The river is the village, and the black and white killer whales that herd the fish to the end of the inlet the better to gobble them. The village is the salmon who comes up the river to spawn, the seal who follows the salmon and bites off his head, the blue jay whose name is like the sound he makes—‘ Kwiss-kwiss.’ The village is the talking bird, the owl, who calls the name of the man who is going to die, and the silver-tipped grizzly who ambles into the village, and the little white speck that is the mountain goat on Whoop-Szo.”
During his stay Mark will get to know some of the myths and dances; he will learn the language and become part of the community. He will share their sorrows and their joy, their patience and generosity. That Mark is respectful to their culture soon becomes clear to them: ““Did you notice that at the graveside he left quietly and asked no questions?” They all nodded. “He respected our customs. And what will he say when he knows we are losing our sons, and that our young no longer understand the meaning of the totems?”" This last sentence is significant as the novel addresses the issue of preservation of First Nation culture. In the story, sons and daughters leave home to be educated but lose their indigenous identity in the process. It is mostly the elders who remember the legends of their tribe. Totem poles are lost or destroyed along the line together with their meaning, and family treasures are indiscriminately sold. There is a prevailing sadness that eventually all the younger people would leave, and that once the older people die a culture and a chunk of history will die with them.
Blunden Harbour Totems by Emily Carr (Wikipedia)
(Canadian artist Emily Carr was also concerned about the loss of totems.)
Mark is gentle but firm, and knows when to say "no". He doesn't simply preach, but he spends most of his time helping his parishioners, transporting them, being there when they are ill or dying, and helping with physical tasks. He councils the young as they leave to be educated: "“You will be lonely, and you will be afraid sometimes. I was lonely, and I was afraid when I went to your village. Both are an inescapable part of every life.”" He participates in their activities, is there to see the salmon run (which is beautifully described) and accompanies a new friend when the latter goes hunting. The novel focuses on the better attributes of human nature and (to my relief) not particularly on religion.
There is abundant wildlife in the novel, and some wonderful descriptions of nature and of people living in harmony with nature.
Be prepared to laugh, smile, and shed a tear or two.
#####
"“Yes, but in the end it will be deserted, the totems will fall, and the green will cover them. And when I think of it, I am glad I will not be here to see.”"
"Both knew there was friendship between them now, forged without words and needing none."
"He was alone on the float there in the wilderness, a drop of something wet on his cheek that was not rain."
This is how the First Nation inhabitants regard their village: “His village is not the strip of land four miles long and three miles wide that is his as long as the sun rises and the moon sets. The myths are the village and the winds and the rains. The river is the village, and the black and white killer whales that herd the fish to the end of the inlet the better to gobble them. The village is the salmon who comes up the river to spawn, the seal who follows the salmon and bites off his head, the blue jay whose name is like the sound he makes—‘ Kwiss-kwiss.’ The village is the talking bird, the owl, who calls the name of the man who is going to die, and the silver-tipped grizzly who ambles into the village, and the little white speck that is the mountain goat on Whoop-Szo.”
During his stay Mark will get to know some of the myths and dances; he will learn the language and become part of the community. He will share their sorrows and their joy, their patience and generosity. That Mark is respectful to their culture soon becomes clear to them: ““Did you notice that at the graveside he left quietly and asked no questions?” They all nodded. “He respected our customs. And what will he say when he knows we are losing our sons, and that our young no longer understand the meaning of the totems?”" This last sentence is significant as the novel addresses the issue of preservation of First Nation culture. In the story, sons and daughters leave home to be educated but lose their indigenous identity in the process. It is mostly the elders who remember the legends of their tribe. Totem poles are lost or destroyed along the line together with their meaning, and family treasures are indiscriminately sold. There is a prevailing sadness that eventually all the younger people would leave, and that once the older people die a culture and a chunk of history will die with them.
Blunden Harbour Totems by Emily Carr (Wikipedia)
(Canadian artist Emily Carr was also concerned about the loss of totems.)
Mark is gentle but firm, and knows when to say "no". He doesn't simply preach, but he spends most of his time helping his parishioners, transporting them, being there when they are ill or dying, and helping with physical tasks. He councils the young as they leave to be educated: "“You will be lonely, and you will be afraid sometimes. I was lonely, and I was afraid when I went to your village. Both are an inescapable part of every life.”" He participates in their activities, is there to see the salmon run (which is beautifully described) and accompanies a new friend when the latter goes hunting. The novel focuses on the better attributes of human nature and (to my relief) not particularly on religion.
There is abundant wildlife in the novel, and some wonderful descriptions of nature and of people living in harmony with nature.
Be prepared to laugh, smile, and shed a tear or two.
#####
"“Yes, but in the end it will be deserted, the totems will fall, and the green will cover them. And when I think of it, I am glad I will not be here to see.”"
"Both knew there was friendship between them now, forged without words and needing none."
"He was alone on the float there in the wilderness, a drop of something wet on his cheek that was not rain."
April 29, 2015
Read 40 years ago. I liked it at the time, though now details are hazy, except that there was sadness, melancholy, inevitable loss. I remember thinking that this was unfair.
Read
February 18, 2021A short, powerful read. 5 stars
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