STORM RIDERS

An extraordinarily moving tale from Lesley (The Sky Fisherman, 1995, etc.) of an idealistic Caucasian father’s agonizing relationship with his adopted son, a Tlingit Indian boy cursed with fetal alcohol syndrome and an abusive childhood. By adopting Wade, a charming, energetic six-year-old orphan whose hands are scarred from physical abuse, Oregon community-college professor Clark Woods hopes he will somehow atone for Emmett Woods, the man who walked out on Clark and his mother, Grace, shortly after Clark was born. Clark’s Tlingit wife, Payette, who doesn—t want children of her own, agrees to the situation at first, then becomes estranged from Clark as Wade becomes an increasing burden. Hyperactive and prone to sudden acts of violence, the boy also has severe learning disabilities and suffers hallucinations in which he sees whales, otters, and other Alaskan wildlife with totemic significance, in places where no such creatures exist. Special classes and therapy sessions fail to help him. When Payette walks out, Clark’s mother moves in to help. Grace can—t watch Wade all the time, and, when a neighbor’s two-year-old drowns in a drainage culvert, police suspect that Wade, who blamed the accident on a whale, may have harmed the girl. Charges aren—t filed, yet Clark is tormented with doubt as Wade grows older, stronger, and more dangerous. Natalie, Clark’s second wife, loves the boy but fears he may harm their baby daughter, Helen, until Clark puts Wade in a group home. Wade runs off from the home and goes on a crime spree, forcing Clark to follow the last-chance advice of Dr. RealBird, a part-Indian child therapist who believes that returning Wade to his tribe might give the boy what Clark cannot. Though slow and meandering, the story gradually builds to a mystically uplifting take on the eternal distances separating fathers and sons, as well as a larger metaphor for the estrangement that both isolates and protects Indian culture from mainstream America.